
Mm':- 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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Shelf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CT 13 m* 



THE REALITY OF FAITH 



THE 



REALITY OF FAITH 



NEWMAN SMYTH 

AUTHOR OF "orD FAITHS IN NEW LIGHT," "ORTHODOX THEOLOGY 
OF TO-DAY," ETC. 



"Great reconciling principles, which, if I could declare them, might set 
the age free from some of its divisions,'^ — F. D. Maurice. 



1 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1884 



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COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



GRANT & FAIRES 
PHILADELPHIA 



PREFACE. 

M. Taine, in his description of the transition from the 
classic to the modern age of English literature, informs 
us that " when Eoland, being made a minister, presented 
himself before Louis xvi. in a simple dress-coat and 
shoes without buckles, the master of the ceremonies 
raised his hands to heaven, thinking that all was lost. 
In fact, all was changed/' 

Marked changes of late years have fallen over the 
modes of religious thought and speech, and some among 
us, too easily alarmed, like the master of ceremonies, 
have thrown up their hands to heaven as though all were 
lost. In fact, there prevails in the religious world a 
strong and growing desire to escape from the artificial, 
the mechanical, and the formal, and to find the natural, 
the living, and the real in Christian faith and practice. 
Among the laity there is noticeable an honest impatience 
with continued theological controversy, and an increasing 
concern in those pressing problems of real life which 
wait, around the very doors of our churches, for their 
solution in social righteousness and peace. Among the 



vi Preface. 

better educated and more thoughtful clergy, there is evi- 
dent a genuine and often intense desire to go behind the 
Protestant traditions, to avoid professional phrases and 
judgments, and to study theology afresh in the first 
facts and actual processes of revelation and life, and in 
the real spirit of Christianity. They see that the popu- 
lar reaction from all theology, although justly provoked 
by weariness of theological abstractions and strife, 
threatens to cut life loose from the divine truth which 
is the motive-power of social morality ; and they are 
anxious, therefore, to keep the vital truths of faith in 
efficient contact with the thoughts and purposes of men. 
They see clearly, and feel strongly, that we need, not so 
much a new theology, but a real theology. 

One of our easily besetting sins as religious thinkers 
and teachers is the sin of nominalism in theology. 
Athanasius saw occasion to warn contending theologians 
in his day not to strive about words. This caution of 
the great theologian of the early Church is always in 
order. It is easy for us to forget the supreme realities 
in our zeal for the phrases and forms which have come 
to stand for the living elements of our faith. Often it 
is easier for us to rest satisfied with some scientific defi- 
nition of a truth than it is for us to seek humbly and 
patiently for the real, and perhaps larger fact of revela- 
tion. It is easier sometimes for us to follow the short 
cut of our own logic straight through the Bible than it 
is to pursue the longer, and often winding way of God's 



Preface. vii 

thought and God's patience in the history of revelation 
and redemption. The questions, however, which of late 
the clergy have been called to meet, are not chiefly ques- 
tions about particular words of doctrine, but they concern 
the reality of all faith. Present religious issues are not 
formed around some special system of Christian doc- 
trines ; religion itself is confronted with unbelief. The 
religious question is between practical atheism and real 
faith in the living God. We are compelled, therefore, by 
the providence of the hour to return to the first, command- 
ing principles of the Christian revelation ; and we should 
not regard with suspicion, but welcome with friendly 
ecclesiastical hospitality, all inquiries, and especially any 
new Biblical studies, which may enable us to stand more 
intelligently and securely upon the final facts of the work 
of the Spirit of God in human consciousness and in the 
history of redemption. 

The present spirit and quiet determination of the 
independent evangelical clergy do not threaten further 
divisions and strife among brethren. On the contrary, 
only in the humble, yet fearless desire to discover and to 
acknowledge the real and the vital in every form of belief, 
and in all the historic creeds, can any of us hope to win 
the blessing of the peacemaker in modem thought and 
life. This spirit and desire are the opposite of sectari- 
anism and individualism ; — as it was a real faith in 
truth, and a living sympathy with men, which enabled 
Maurice to write of himself these words : " I feel that 



viii Preface. 

I am to be a man of war against all parties, that I may 
be a peacemaker between all men." 

Some among us, indeed, fear that the religious history 
of New England is about to repeat itself, and they warn 
us of the danger of another schism like that which, in 
the early years of this century, rent our churches in 
twain. It is true that incidental evils which we have 
suffered from that separation are passing away. We are 
out-living the harm and hurt to faith from a too self- 
contained and disputatious divinity in our theological 
schools and our pulpits. It is true that theological 
dogmatism is somewhat sobered by the responsibilities 
of modern thought. But they who fear a repetition of 
the divisions of the past, fail to discern the better spirit 
which already pervades, and is moving, the whole relig- 
ious community. They need to lift up their eyes and to 
behold the evident signs of the working in our own day 
of that higher Power which one of the pilgrim fathers 
called, "Zion^s Wonder-working Providence in New 
England.'' The conservatism of providence appears, 
not in our cries of alarm and separation, but in the gain 
of a more real and catholic Christianity in all denomina- 
tions of believers. The manifest destiny of religious 
thought and life is not further ages of persecutions and 
controversies, but a growing fulfillment of Christ's 
prayer for the oneness of his disciples that the world 
may believe that the Father hath sent him. The present 
missionary oi)portunity of the Church is a signal and 



Preface. ix 

commandiDg providence, calling us all away from un- 
seemly contentions and needless oifense. 

The pulpit has rightly been made in New England 
the last court of appeal in the trial of theological teach- 
ings and tendencies. Calvinism has already been largely 
modified in this country by the practical demands of 
the pulpit. Any friction of our forms of doctrine, and 
loss of power, in the work of the pulpit, betray some 
mal-adjustment of our theology to the actual require- 
ments of the world upon faith, and indicate the necessity 
of some further improvement of our methods, or recon- 
struction of our system of beliefs. We must have in 
every age good working creeds, if we are to keep the faith. 
The doctrine of the Son of man was always life for life. 

The following sermons are taken from those which I 
have had occasion to preach, during the past tw^o years, 
in a pulpit whose liberty has been won by others before 
me, and to a congregation whose thoughtful attention 
has been a constant encouragement. The title, under 
which I have gathered them, expresses a conviction and 
a desire which will be found, I trust, pervading them 
all. I certainly have not attempted in this volume of 
sermons to construct any complete and closed system of 
divinity — I have not sought even to formulate anew a 
single doctrine of grace ; still less have I been anxious 
to state, or to defend, any " new theology." " Alas for 
me," said that most daring of speculative theologians, 
Richard Rothe, " if Christianity be not more than my 




X Preface, 

system of iiP Our thought is never more than a cup- 
ful of God's truth. Yet there is a blessing promised to 
him who brings a cup of cold water only in the name 
of a disciple. And many souls are thirsting for some 
living truth from our pulpits. 

It should not need to be said that these sermons 
represent no party in the Church, and no school in 
theology : no views of mine should be imputed to any 
of those honored theological teachers and professors 
with whom I am glad to claim fellowship in the general 
sympathies of a profound religious movement for the 
more thorough Christianization of theology, and with 
whom, also, I rejoice in the belief that we have in the 
Word made flesh a real revelation, from the real God, 
to the real life of the world. 

New Haven, Conn., August 1st, 1884. 



CONTENTS. 
I. 

PAGE 

Faith a Pbeparation for Sight, 1 

II. 

God's Self-Kevelation through Life, 17 

III. 

Ultimates of Knowledge and Beginnings of Faith, . 31 

IV. 

The Difficulty of not Believing, 45 

V. 

Jesus' View of Life, 60 

VI. 

Keal Christianity, 73 

VIL 

The Christ-likeness of God, 88 

xi 



xii Contents, 



VIII. 

PAGE 

Knowledge of Self through Christ, 104 

IX. 

God's Forgetfulness of Sin, 120 

X. 

Making for Ourselves Souls, 135 

XI. 

Jesus' Method of Doing Good, 149 

XII. 
The Imperatives op Jesus, 165 

XIII. 
Methods of Living, 180 

XIV. 
The Missionary Motive, 197 

XV. 

The Permanent Elements of Faith, 213 

XVI. 
Time a Kate of Motion — A New Year's Sermon, . . . 229 

XVII. 

The Law of the Kesurrection — An Easter Sermon, . 244 



Contents. xili 



XVIII. 

PAGE 

Life a Prophecy, 266 

XIX. 

The Last Judgment the Christian Judgment, .... 283 

XX. 

Looking back upon our Earthly Life, 301 






THE REALITY OF FAITH. 
I. 

FAITH A PREPARATION FOR SIGHT. 

" EniJ 5 sain hisians ai dSoIi." — Ezekiel i. i. 

It is a suggestive remark of the late Canon Mozley, in 
his fine discourse upon Nature, that "Scripture has 

specially consecrated the faculty of sight The 

glorified saint of Scripture is especially a beholder; he 
gazes, he looks ; ... he does not merely ruminate within, 
but his whole mind is carried out toward and upon a 
great representation." 

Moses, and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of 
the elders of Israel, we read in the book of Exodus, 
went up, and " they saw the God of Israel : and there 
was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sap- 
phire-stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his 
clearness." "And the sight of the glory of the Lord 
was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the 
eyes of the children of Israel." So the history of 
Israel begins before Sinai with Moses' vision of God ; 

1 



The Reality of Faith. 



and the Christian prophet, at the close of the history 
of redemption, saw " a great white throne, and him that 
sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled 
away/^ 

You need only trace through the Scriptures the use 
of the words relating to sight to become aware of this 
characteristic of the Bible that it brings its spiritual 
teachings and its promises to vivid, pictorial represen- 
tation through the human eye and its visions. Thus, 
when the prophet comes with a word of the Lord to the 
king of Israel, he said : " I saw the Lord sitting on his 
throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on 
his right hand and on his left." The Messianic promise 
is unfolded in pictures of visible splendors. The wil- 
derness is glad ; the desert blossoms as a rose. " They 
shall see,'' Isaiah sings, " the glory of the Lord, and the 
excellency of our God." The New Testament employs 
the same clear language of the eye in its presentation 
of the kingdom of God, and the hope of redemption. 
Jesus' blessing to the pure in heart is that they shall see 
God. He spoke to a Master in Israel of the new birth, 
without which no man can see the kingdom of God. 
The first Christian martyr, "being ftdl of the Holy 
Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the 
glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of 
God." The missionary apostle, who had learned what 
all trial is, knows no better way of describing who the 
Christians are than by calling them those who " look not 
at the things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen." The true Christian life was, in his expe- 
rience of it, a " looking unto Jesus." Faith is living 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 3 

as " seeing him who is invisible/' Not yet, indeed, have 
believers ascended into the immediate vision of God ; 
" But we all, ^vith open face beholding as in a glass the 
glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image 
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." 
The Christian hope, which we are told should now 
purify our hearts, is that " we shall see him as he is." 

Not to quote other passages of Scripture which show 
how the Bible employs the language of sight to convey 
its revelations, let me call your attention to the signifi- 
cance of this Biblical method of speech. For it is deeply 
significant. The inspiration of the Spirit discloses itself 
in the boldness, clearness, and impressiveness with which, 
throughout the Bible, unseen and spiritual things are 
represented as though they were visible — as though we 
could see them. The glory of the Lord, the kingdom 
of God, Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the 
coming of the Lord in the glory of the angels, the new 
heavens and the new earth, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
descending out of heaven from God, having the glory 
of God ; — what other book, what in this Book of books 
but the Spirit of the Lord, has made the unseen realities 
of the eternity around us appear in such power of visi- 
ble form and light? 

By this "consecration of sight," and through this 
powerful pictorial language of the Bible, the Lord and 
Master of the Scriptures evidently means to impress 
upon us the outward reality of the unseen world. Let 
me explain. 

The human eye is the flower of the senses. Touch 
is said by the physiologists to be the ground-form of all 



The Reality of Faith, 



sensation. Touch may be the root, as it were, of the 
senses, but sight is the consummate flower of sensation. 
The sense of touch, growing out of close contact with 
the elements of nature, and reaching up into the light, 
blossoms at length into the perfect eye with its world of 
beauty. Sight is at once the freest and surest, the 
largest and the clearest contact of the intelligence within 
us with the real order of the world without us. Touch 
may be the beginning, but sight is the perfection of our 
belief that there is a world of reality beyond our self- 
conscious thought, an outward world in v/hich, with 
others like ourselves, we live and move and have our 
being. In short, what we see with our eyes, we believe 
exists. Philosophers, indeed, may doubt this ; but, to 
the common sense of men in general, sight is the evidence 
that things are what they are seen to be. 

You will perceive, then, one of the important mean- 
ings of this characteristic Biblical presentation of truth 
as a spectacle which the believer beholds. The Spirit 
of the Bible uses this language of vision to impress 
upon us the outward reality of the divine verities which 
it reveals. They are to prophets of old as objects of 
sight. The Apostles looked forward in hope to the 
perfection of sight in the vision of Christ at the right 
hand of God and the glory of the city of God. This 
manner in which the inspired Scriptures keep us con- 
stantly looking out upon the sublime realities of God's 
kingdom, as seeing Him who is invisible, is in marked 
contrast with the manner in which men of the world 
are apt to regard religion, and unlike even modes of 
religious experience or expression very common among 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 



believers. Thus a great many persons, when religious 
duties are urged upon them, will respect what may be 
said to them as a sincere expression of the thought or 
feeling of the person who speaks to them about religion, 
but his words will hardly stand to their minds for any 
corresponding realities ; they do not associate religious 
ideas with the objects in this world which have to them 
present reality, with those things in life which press 
upon them, and in which they are actively engaged. 
Religion seems to them rather to be a system of uncer- 
tain beliefs, a series of fine sentiments — something for 
philosophers to discuss, or, at best, a poetic satisfaction 
for desires and emotions which float, cloud-like, above 
the ordinary paths of life, and which take the hues and 
aspects of individual temperaments and moods, changing 
and changeable with the times and seasons. Am I 
mistaken in saying that to a large number of people 
engrossed in the business of the world, pressed by its 
tangible necessities, crowded by its urgent tasks, dealing 
every day with its positive and palpable objects, the call 
of religion seems usually like a distant and unintelligible 
sound — like the echo of an Alpine horn among the 
mountains just heard in the valleys, a sound not near 
enough to cause them to stop and look up from their 
work ; not a personal call summoning them to a task at 
once to be undertaken, or a duty to be met? This 
world is real and present to them every day ; religion is 
unreal to them. This world is near and definite to 
tliem ; the next world undefined and distant as the sky. 
The disregard and indifference to religious matters 
which such persons evince might have some justification 



The Reality of Faith, 



if religion were simply a matter of inward contempla- 
tion, or if religious beliefs were merely the play of so 
many illumined emotions over the surface of real life. 
But what if these religious feelings are our natural 
instincts of eternal realities? What if these profound 
religious convictions, which men in all ages have 
cherished, are the impressions which a living God is 
making of his own being upon the living soul of man ? 
V/liat if these ideas of God, and immortality, and the 
judgment, are now the dim dawnings upon us of some- 
thing which, erelong, shall be the one reality around us, 
outward, present, and visible, wherever the soul shall 
turn, as now this world is the object which fills the eye? 
What if these feelings, intuitions, half-understood truths 
of divinity, are the sure signs and indications, if we 
read them aright, that the eyes of our spirits are now 
forming for the future open perception of the world of 
unseen and abiding realities — for the vision of God? 
Turn again, then, to the Bible and observe how these 
things which we do not see are spoken of as though 
they were the things to be seen — the great divine specta- 
cle which all, some day, must see. These visible earthly 
things, which seem to us solid realities, fade in these 
Scriptures into metaphors of those invisible things 
which, to the eye of the inspired prophet, stand out 
upon our history as God^s purposes and God's judg- 
ments ; and to Jesus, who knew the Father, all outward 
nature was but a parable of the kingdom of heaven. 
The Bible is pervaded throughout with a wonderful sense 
of the reality of spiritual things. It makes this pass- 
ing world seem the shadow, and the other world the sub- 



tig^W- ji' .J: 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 7 

stance. The Bible is an open eye for the spiritual world. 
Through the Bible we seem to be looking out upon the 
realm of God's presence and purposes, and spiritual 
things are spread like a broad landscape before us in the 
light of the glory of God. The Spirit of God, through 
these Scriptures, inverts the common order of our expe- 
rience, for it makes this world, which is close around us, 
grow distant as we read ; and that land which fs far 
away, draws near. "VVe walk with the prophets in 
visions of God ; with the disciples our conversation is 
in heaven ; in any circle where Jesus stands in the 
midst this earth seems to pass away, and the kingdom 
of God, and its peace, becomes all in all. 

Such, I say, is the unmistakable impression of the 
reality of unseen things which the Word of God makes 
upon man. Whenever we give ourselves up to its 
influence, such is the sense of the reality of divine 
things which often, unawares, comes over us ; it breaks, 
for moments, at least, the spell of this world upon us. 
Such has been in the history of thought the power of 
these inspired Scriptures in bringing out, almost as in 
visible reality, the other world, and the glory of God. 

But it is hard for men in general to gain and to keep 
against the impressions of the senses this strong Biblical 
sense of the realities of faith. Yet just this intense sense 
of spiritual reality is perhaps the chief need of faith at 
the present time. There is so much in our worldliness 
and our culture to make our spiritual life seem to be our 
dream-life, and our present pursuit of happiness our real 
life. There is much, also, both in the questionings of 
science, and the overbeliefs of human theologies, to throw 



8 The Reality of Faith. 

thoughtful minds into uncertainty and a sense of vague 
unreality with regard to religious truths. But, on the 
other hand, the longing, the passion, for reality is one of 
the strongest and most significant characteristics of that 
revival of religious thought and faith which from many 
sources is rising and growing in power at the present 
time. It used to be said of Dr. Arnold that his daily 
longing was to go beyond words to realities. That long- 
ing is now at the heart of the most religious thought of 
the Christian world. It is the intense desire to see 
things as they are ; to behold the living truth come forth 
from the cerements of words in which custom and 
tradition have bound it; to look beyond the material 
forms which perish, and these physical forces over against 
which our wills stand self-conscious, and to discern some- 
thing of the intelligence which works through all ; to 
look, also, through Christianity and through the Bible, 
to the presence of divinity, and to find, amid our 
strange history of sin and death, the real self-revelation 
of God in the history of redeeming love. It is this 
intense longing for the real in religion which creates 
sometimes undue impatience of old forms of faith, and 
which certainly can never rest satisfied in the acceptance 
of mere propositions about religion. " Show us the 
Father, and it sufficeth us.'' Nothing else will. We 
want not more correct beliefs, but more faith. We want 
feiith in the reality of all spiritual things ; in our own 
souls ; in the heaven of souls who are not to be lost from 
love in death ; in the living God, who is present in this 
world, here and now, as well as once and there ; the 
Father who knows us, who thinks of us where we are. 



Faith a Preparation for Sight, g 

" Show us the Father ! ^' We do not want words about 
things beyond us ; we do not want arguments and more 
probabilities about divinity ; we do not want systems of 
thought to bow down to and worship ; alas ! men's 
systems of divinity may be the idols which the people 
set up while the true prophet is waiting upon the 
mountain for some vision of God. We want more reality 
in faith. We want to be in Him that is true. We 
want to know whether the whole creation is a vast gilded 
emptiness ; whether our life is but a bubble, catching a 
moment's sunbeam perhaps, and then breaking in the 
restless deep, upon whose surface it had a brief 
existence ; whether anything is real and true and ever- 
lasting ; whether we are and God is ; for if we could be 
sure of the one, we could easily believe the other. 
" Show us the Father ! '' so out of the deepest doubt 
springs the prayer of the highest faith ; " Show us the 
Father, and it sufficeth us." And the Master knew our 
great want. "He that hath seen me," he answered, 
"hath seen the Father;" " Have I been so long time with 
you and yet hast thou not known me ? " Oh, doubt of 
faith ! oh, spirit of an age searching for visions of the real 
and everlasting ! have I been so long time with you — 
with you in the centuries' mighty works of faith, with 
you in this new creation of my redeeming love still 
growing and exulting before your eyes, mth you in your 
own doubt and searching for the living God, and yet 
hast thou not known me ? 

"Yes," but some one says, "here you will evade again 
in words our want of faith ; we ask for proof of things 
hoped for, and your answer is the expansion of some 



lo The Reality of Faith. 

text from the Bible." I admit that it is so. I admit 
that somehow whenever we find ourselves searching for 
the real heart of things, we discover ourselves repeating, 
and dwelling upon, some word of Jesus Christ. I admit 
that when we have reached the end of our own knowl- 
edge, and, pressed still on by the irresistible desire to 
know what is behind and beyond that which we see and 
touch, we still question and search, we do find that these 
Scriptures open ways for our souls straight out into a 
diviner world; and where all human wisdom is silent, 
the words of One who seemed to know come ringing 
down through the centuries, awakening echoes as of for- 
gotten reminiscences of heaven and God in our own 
souls ; and where all our science is but larger ignorance, 
there in Jesus' light we see light. " Lord, to whom shall 
we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life." But let me 
make, if possible, the real reasons of this confidence 
more definite. 

I have already said that the Bible does what is done 
nowhere else in the world, viz., takes impalpable spiritual 
things and spreads them, like landscapes, around us as 
we read. It imparts a tremendous conception of the 
present reality of the world to come. Human empires 
become the dust of earth ; the kingdom of God is forever. 
I would say now, besides this, that faith, and especially 
Biblical faith, has certain resemblances to the sight of the 
eye. The Apostle, it is true, contrasted faith with 
sight; we are absent, Paul said, from the Lord; we 
Avalk by faith, not by sight. We do not now have such 
open knowledge of the eternal reality as we do of the 
fields or mountains upon which we may look ; if we did, 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 1 1 

such knowledge might be the end of that discipline of 
character which is now possible because unbelief also is 
possible. Full and open revelation of the glory of the 
Lord to all men on earth, as God is seen by the angels 
in heaven — would not that be the beginning of the day of 
judgment ? So in this trial-world — in this time of our 
education and discipline — we w^alk by faith, not by sight 
as yet ; but, nevertheless, faith also is a kind of seeing ; 
it may be a rudimentary perception of the world of light. 
Faith is soul-seeing ; faith is the insight of the spirit 
which is in us into the divine heart of things without us. 
Nay, faith is the undying affirmation of the human heart 
that the darkness and want of which it is conscious are 
the evidence of the fullness of life and the light for 
which we must have been created, and which somewhere, 
sometime, our seeking shall find. Faith is the embryonic 
eye of the soul for the world to come of eternal reality 
and unutterable glory. I think I can make this plainer 
by an illustration which I often use for myself. Let me 
suppose, as some theorists would go so far as to assert, 
that the eye was slowly developed from the merest 
rudimentary susceptibility to light. Before the eye was 
created, or began to grow, no living thing could have 
had any sense of darkness. Does a man born blind 
have any sense of darkness ? Having not the slightest 
sense of light, how can he have that positive sense of 
darkness which we experience when we close our eyes ? 
Were it not for the words of men who see, this world of 
light and colors would be as unknown to a man born 
blind as heaven is to us. He would have no possible 
place for a world of light anywhere within the range of 



12 The Reality of Faith, 

his positive experience of life. He knows neither h'ght nor 
darkness. Consciousness of darkness implies some sense 
of light. Suppose the sense of sight, then, to have been 
in the animal creation at first rudimentary. Or, what is 
better for my purpose, suppose that in a conscious, intel- 
ligent race of beings, the eye, or the capacity to come into 
relation to the world of light, begins little by little to 
develop. At first, then, the sense of light would be a dim 
perception of darkness. In comparison with the utterly 
visionless state, a change would impress itself upon the 
consciousness ; such beings would perceive something in 
themselves which they could not understand ; and meeting 
one another, in their first rudimentary beginnings of 
vision, would begin to wonder what the strange sensa- 
tion meant ; what the new consciousness of darkness— 
the inborn, growing longing and endeavor for something 
unrealized as yet — could possibly mean. Suppose the 
process of growing vision to continue. They begin to 
distinguish light from darkness, or, at least, one part of 
their existence during half of every twenty-four hours 
has something strange about it which marks it oif from 
the other half. Suppose, then, at length, the suscepti- 
bility for light becomes the perfect eye ; the vague feeling 
of light passes into the clear vision of the day. A 
world unkno^vn before nature in this race of beings 
began to feel after the light, a world at first vaguely 
dreamed of when the rudiments of sight began to form, 
denied by those who would believe nothing beyond 
tangible experience, yet believed in, and longed for, by 
those who felt that their growing knowledge of their 
darknass must mean something beyond — some satisfac- 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 13 

tion to come — this world now spreads its bright scenes 
before the finished eye of the perfect man, and it is seen 
to have been existing around them all the while ; it had 
existed from the beginning, although before it had been 
wholly beyond the experience of a sightless race, who, 
nevertheless, were walking in it, though they did not 
loiow it; it was near them, waiting to be revealed, 
though their eyes were not yet opened to behold it. 

So I would say that faith is a kind of seeing — man's 
first rudimentary perception of the heavenly world. 
Faith is the beginning of spiritual sight. We know 
that it is dark ; and how could we know that, if there 
were no glimmering of celestial light, if we were not 
now beginning to see ? The soul of man is the forming 
eye for the light of the glory of God. We know 
already that there is a high and holy portion of our 
experience which seems totally unlike the part of our 
life in contact with this material world. We know that 
something has touched us which makes us profoundly 
susceptible to influences from beyond our present narrow 
world of sense, and deeply conscious of longings for some- 
thing yet to be revealed. We know that our sense of 
want and darkness is prophetic of something grand and 
beautiful beyond. We know that so much of truth and 
light from beyond has been given us that we cannot 
help living in a state of expectancy and great spiritual 
hope. Shall God's own prophecy of the forming eye of 
the spirit within us for visions of the God around us 
prove the great mockery and deception of the universe ? 
Ah ! but within the whole compass of our experience of 
nature our science cannot point to a single, solitary false 



14 The Reality of Faith. 

prophecy of life. Why, then, shall the truth of nature 
suddenly become falsehood within the human soul? 
No ; faith is the apparent beginning within us of the 
capacity to see the divine Reality in which we have our 
being. All the years of this present stage of human 
development heaven may have been existing near man 
as the world of light to the blind — near us, another, 
most real world in this same great universe in which 
we now walk by faith, as the day is another unknown 
world beyond the experience of, but near, the sightless. 
Faith shall pass into the open vision. The other world, 
now unseen, but not unknown, shall be revealed in its 
breadth and in its beauty — ^the world which needs no 
sun for its day, for God's presence is its light — ^the 
land of life immortal which is not far off, where we 
shall see as we are seen, and know as we are known. 

I have not yet brought out of this thought all that is 
in it. I have been speaking of faith in general, of 
man's intuitive sense, that is, of spiritual and divine 
reality ; and I have just affirmed that this most human 
faith is at least a knowledge of our darkness, which 
implies some light from above. It is an experience of 
the soul — constant and indestructible in the life of 
humanity — which betrays the existence of something 
beyond. But when this general human faith is touched 
by the Spirit of God — when the soul opens in sudden, 
and often thrilling responsiveness to the call of divine 
grace, — oh ! then, it is like the opening of the eye to a 
new world. The work of the Holy Spirit does quicken 
wonderfully and enhance the power of faith. A spir- 
itual assurance follows the touch of the Spirit of Christ. 



Faith a Preparation for Sight. 15 

In our conversion we discovered for what we were 
created. Behold, all things are become new ! Hence- 
forth we wait in hope. We trust the dawning vision, 
and follow it, and it does not lead us into disappoint- 
ment. The more we believe it, the more we find our 
lives enlarged, our happiness enriched, and our hearts at 
peace. The growing prophecy of the growing light has 
been good, and only good to us from the first hour when 
we were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. We 
know in whom we have believed. We know that the 
Son of God is come, and hath given us an understand- 
ing, that we may know him that is true, and we are in 
him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. We 
shall need only to die to see him as he is. 

This brings us to the concluding thought which I had 
intended for the second half of my sermon, but which I 
must now dismiss with a few words. I refer to another 
very significant use of the language of the eye in the 
Bible. Briefly it is this : Through the eye we are 
brought into the most perfect union with nature. The 
eye unites us, as no other sense does, to the world with- 
out. The perfection of our life in this earth is in seeing. 
Consider, then, in this respect what these Scriptures 
mean. Not only is there a divine world of eternal 
reality in which we are to live forever, but we are to see 
it with open vision ; we are to behold the unveiled glory 
of the Lord. We are to live, that is, in the most perfect 
conceivable union and harmony with the eternal reality, 
made one with the blessed presence of God. This is the 
true, the eternal life, to know God, and Jesus Christ whom 
he hath sent. We are to dwell immortal in God's own 



1 6 The Reality of Faith. 

world, in his own heaven, ourselves at last perfectly- 
adapted and harmonized to that sphere of light and life ; 
or, as the Scripture represents it, and as the saints in all 
ages have desired to realize it, we are to dwell in the 
vision of God. And that disciple who had seen Jesus 
and the glory as of the only begotten Son of God in 
Jesus Christ, as he looked forward in the bright Christian 
expectation to his life after death with the Lord, wrote 
for us these assured words of faith : " It doth not yet 
appear what we shall be : but we know that, when he 
shall appear, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him 
as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him 
purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Shall not our 
eyes become sunny with this Christian hope ? Thank 
God for those aged Christians, waiting their translation, 
who already in this world seem to have come out upon 
the bright side of their life's trouble ! They shall behold 
the city of God ! We all are waiting for the day of God. 
We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and 
a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Where- 
fore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be 
diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without 
spot, and blameless. 



II. 

GOD'S SELF-REVELATION THROUGH LIFE. 

" %nti tf)^ ^ih hns t\iz HLisIt of JHm."— John i. 4. 

Theee are texts in the Bible which are like springs 
of water among the mountains. When our thoughts 
grow weary of climbing, when in life's glare our hearts 
are athirst, we return and rest by these quiet springs of 
inspiration. Beside these unfailing fountains of truth 
we build the tabernacles of our lives. Such texts are 
Scriptures like these : God is love ; God is light ; God 
so loved the world ; Our Father which art in heaven ; 
Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest. To one of this class of Scriptures 
I would come back with you this morning. No men 
more than we, who live in this noon-tide glare of his- 
tory, ever needed to find for themselves and to drink of 
those fountains of life which spring ever fresh from 
beneath the foundations of the world. I believe the 
text to which I would now lead your thought does con- 
tain truth of God old as the creation and new as to-day. 
To return to this truth, to fill our cup from this pure, 
deep word of God, may refresh and invigorate our faith 
for present trials and endeavor. 

In the first place, this Scripture opens to us God's 
living way of making himself known on earth. It is 

now of increasing importance that we should have truth- 
2 17 



1 8 The Reality of Faith, 

ful ideas concerning the way in which God has made 
himself known to us. All persons who read current 
literature are aware that the nature and claims of the 
Bible are now discussed with a freedom and vigor of 
criticism such as would hardly have been tolerated not 
many years ago. Many are alarmed at this criticism of 
the sacred book, and would banish it as an evil spirit 
of doubt from the pulpit and the Church. Whole 
denominations are thrown into excitement because, during 
the past year, certain of their scholars have been calmly 
discussing in books and in reviews the question of the 
Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. One thing seems 
certain : whether we will it or not, the providence of 
God is ordaining that in our day the Bible shall be 
brought under a more microscopic, more exacting, and 
more scientific examination than it has ever before 
received in the history of the Church. Another thing 
seems equally clear : although the pulpit should choose to 
ignore this providential order of religious inquiry, it 
cannot by any enforced silence keep the people from 
knowledge of what is transpiring among the thinkers 
and scholars of the world. Though our youth may hear 
nothing and learn nothing from the pulpit of such 
inquiries into all sacred things, they will hear much, and 
learn a little, of these things from the newspapers, and the 
magazines, and free religious platforms. They will be in 
danger of forming for themselves a kind of scrap-book 
infidelity, picked up from the newspaper odds and ends of 
the world's scholarship — an infidelity made up of broken 
pieces of science, and dashes of color from literature, 
without unifying principle or consistency of substance. 



Gocf s Self-Revelatimi Through Life. 19 

I believe it was Aristotle of old who objected to com- 
merce because foreign notions would corrupt the youth 
of Athens. The days, however, have long gone by 
when we can keep out the danger of doubt and unbelief 
by putting a high ecclesiastical tariff on theological 
importations, and protect domestic faith by laying an 
embargo upon foreign thought. If our pulpits cannot 
stand upon divine facts in our human history ; if they 
cannot stand upon what God has done, calm, confident 
and hopeful, though knowledge flows in upon us like a 
flood, and all the breezes of discussion are astir around 
us ; then no mere breakwaters which councils may try 
to build of customs and creeds can prevent us from 
being swept away. Like the house of the Lord's 
parable. Christian faith cannot be securely built upon the 
sands of human traditions ; we must go down, before we 
begin to build, to the rock of divine fact in the creation 
and history, and upon that rock our faith can stand, a 
secure dwelling-place and home for all who enter in. 

The Biblical foundation of faith is not the manner in 
which holy men of old may have spoken, or the mode 
of their inspiration ; it is the fact of a divine revelation 
through the history of Israel from Abraham to Christ. 
The life was the light of men. God's way of shining 
on this earth has been above all through life. But 
how ? By what life ? The Bible gives the answer to 
this question : for the Bible shows us God's actual way 
with men ; his way through history ; his way of making 
his truth and his law known through historical processes, 
down a line of chosen men, and in combinations of 
events gathering around one central event of history. 



20 The Reality of Faith. 

The Bible is the record and interpretation of a way of 
creation and of life which leads from the promise of the 
beginning on and on, with a purpose never given up, 
and toward a goal never lost from sight, and against all 
human gravitation downward from its high intent, until 
it completes its course in that one sinless life through 
which God shines — ^the true Light — ^the Light which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. In 
other words, God has not made himself known to us 
simply by talking with men about his divinity, or by 
inspiring certain men to write true words about his law. 
God has been present as a living power in man's life, as 
the educating and redemptive power in Israel, as the 
grace and truth of life in Jesus Christ who has declared 
him. Such is God's real self-revelation, his life in men's 
life, his life in the Christ for our life. The Bible is the 
best means we have, probably the best means for all pur- 
poses which we could have, of knowing what God has 
done for us and is for us. The Bible is the means which 
God has himself provided for this end ; it is sufficient, 
and is sufficiently inspired by the Spirit of truth, for this 
educational purpose for which God has given it to us. 
But we need to beware how we take the means for the 
end, or mistake the form of revelation for the substance. 
And no mistake could at present more imperil faith than 
for us to lead men to suppose that the real revelation 
which God has made of his righteousness and grace in 
the history of redemption is identical with the written 
Scriptures, or sacred literature, which reflect that reve- 
lation ; or that Christianity, which results directly from 
Christ's life and death, is dependent for its existence in 



God's Self- Rev elation Through Life. 21 

the world upon the writings which the providence of 
God led the early Church to gather from the age of the 
Apostles as the authentic records and authoritative 
declaration of the teachings of Jesus. The life was the 
light of men ; that was the true Light ; the Word that 
was with God and was God. 

Divine providence, likewise, took thought of the 
human mirrors which should reflect for the world that 
light. Moses and Isaiah, John and Paul, prophets and 
apostles, were placed by providence at proper distances 
and stations to reflect for the world the growing 
revelation — the light from above, which at last shone 
full in the face of Jesus Christ. But the revelation 
from God, and the different reflections of it in the several 
Scriptures from their various angles and positions, are 
not one and the same thing. The light from God is one 
thing, and the glass through which we receive it is 
another thing ; and if a flaw of Rabbinical Judaism, or 
some error of the scribe should be found in the Old 
Testament or the New, the divineness of the real and 
original revelation would not in the least be affected 
thereby. The Bible and the Church are both the results 
of revelation ; Christ stands, above both as their divine 
original and Lord. The commonest illustration may 
serve to bring out the fact which I would insist upon as 
now important for faith to keep in view. You have, let 
me suppose, in your house a genealogical register of 
your family. The day of your own birth is recorded. 
You can trace back your family-line. But you do not 
need the book to prove that you are here. You do not 
need the genealogy to show what manner of man you 



2 2 The Reality of Faith. 

are. Your life is its own witness. You carry your 
ancestors about with you ; their features in your face ; 
their ways in your motions. Though a critic, poring 
over the book, should discover some discrepancies in the 
record of your descent, that would not alter the fact that 
you were born with certain family-traits, and no flaw in 
the genealogy can affect the record which you are making 
by your own life. 

So Christianity is here, in this w^orld, though self- 
evidently not of it. It has come here to stay. It is its 
own evidence. It has also its record and writing of 
interpretation. We are assui-ed by the evangelist of 
the record which God hath given of his Son. A divine 
life was worthy of an inspired record. The Son of man 
and the Book of books have both their permanent place 
in the providence of redeeming love; yet the divine 
Man is before and above the inspired book ; and there 
may be marks of the touch of human fingers upon the 
book, while no human errors shall cling to the garments 
of the Son of God. The written Gospel is indeed worthy 
of the God-man. His Spirit is in it. The immediate 
reflection of the Christ in these Gospels removes them 
from all possible classification with other literature ; as a 
mirror with the sun in it differs from the glass before 
which you strike your little taper, so these Gospels differ 
by the radiance of the heavens in them from all other 
books. Nevertheless, our faith in the real or original 
revelation, in the Christ of the Gospels, does not depend 
upon absolute flawlessness in the reflecting glass. That 
is a question of fact for the critics. Let them examine 
and scrutinize every point in the whole Bible to their 



God's Self- Rev elation Through Life. 23 

heart's content ; we are not anxious to dispute concerning 
the composition of the muTors; we are content to 
receive the light which, by its own radiance, proclaims 
its celestial source ; in this light of life we can walk, 
rejoicing as children of the day. 

I have indicated thus in general the truth concerning 
God's way of making himself known, which may serve 
to render us both honest toward any facts which may 
ever be brought out concerning the Bible, and, at the 
same time, fearless in our faith in the Word made flesh 
which dwelt among us, and of whose glory not the 
chosen Apostles only testify, but the whole of Christi- 
anity is the perpetual witness. I need not stop to guard 
this truth from all possible misunderstanding or abuse, 
but pass on now to another implication of our text. 

Secondly, this Scripture discloses God's way of illu- 
mining our lives. Christ entering into human life is its 
light. I wish to bring out again, at this point, an old 
truth — a truth of human experience as old as those days 
long ago when Jesus first called men to come to him, 
and they found that he knew what was in man, and in 
his presence they came to their own, best, truest selves — 
a truth old as Jesus' first miracle among men, yet new 
as the last-converted soul — an old truth growing 
newer and fresher as the world becomes more Christian 
— ^the truth that the Christ from God alone is equal to 
all human needs ; the truth that he only touches human 
nature in all its chords ; beats all life's music out ; lights up 
all our history. Christianity alone is the truth sufficient 
for the life of the whole world. Christ renews man at 
the centre, and then throughout the whole circumference 




24 The Reality of Faith, 

of his powers and possibilities. Other lights of human 
kindling illumine but portions of our life, and all go 
out in death. The life of Christ is the light of men ; 
and there is no phase of our nature, no need of our 
common humanity, no possibility of our love and hope, 
which his life does not embrace and purify and irradi- 
ate. In one word, Jesus Christ, God with us in our 
life, is alone adequate to human nature. Shall I not 
trust myself to the life v/hich meets, at every point, my 
life ? I go along the shore when the sun hangs a burn- 
ing ball in the hot sky, and the tide is out. Suppose I 
had come to the shore, at that hour, the first of mortals 
from the inland 'country to reach a continent's edge, 
knowing nothing of the daily pulse-beat of the ocean. 
I mark the winding shore, curved and broken, and 
indented, seemingly without law or reason. I notice the 
outreaching cliffs, and the deep fissures worn into the 
very face of the rock. I see, also, the withering sea- 
grasses, and the stretches of parched flats. And while 
I stand and wonder what means this ragged waste, in 
which a continent comes to an end, I hear the sound of 
the approaching sea. I notice the line of foam advanc- 
ing up the beach ; behold ! the great ocean, from all its 
depths, goes forth to meet the shore ; the rising waters 
eddy and play around the headlands and over every 
rock ; the sultriness vanishes before the breeze that 
comes riding in upon the white-crested waves ; and, at 
length, when the tide is full, I know how the deep 
answers the shallows, and the ocean was made to fit the 
shore, and the continent is comprehended in the fulness 
of the waters in which God caused the dry land to 



God's Self- Revelation Through Life. 25 

appear. I kuow that both sea and land were fitted to 
each other by the same creative Power. I see the same 
perfect fitness between Christianity and human nature. 
Christianity alone meets the whole circumference of 
human want, flooding all the shore of our being. Your 
little brooks of philosophy are not enough to cover a 
single marsh ! Out of the deep comes the answer to 
man^s nature. Christianity is the life — the returning 
tide of life — the ever fresh adaptation, morning and 
evening, of eternal truth and love to the whole continent 
of our being. In him was life. In him all fulness 
dwells. And of his fulness have all we received, and 
grace for grace. 

If we stand by this text- — the life was the light of 
men — we shall gain thoroughly human ideas of what 
the Gospel, and the preaching of the Gospel, is intended 
to be. The real Gospel is God^s life through Christ 
toucliing our life and making it new. We do not 
preach the Gospel, therefore, if we are content merely to 
teach a system of Biblical truths. The prime object of 
this Bible is not to make men theologians, but to make 
them Christians, and good Christians. It is not of so 
much importance that we should be able to justify God's 
ways toward man, as it is that we should be able to 
walk ourselves with hearts right toward God, and blame- 
less among men. God's eye, through the Bible, is 
fixed upon character. The atonement is God's own 
method of forgiving sin, and restoring sinners, without 
losing his eternal respect for character — for his own 
righteousness, and the right living of all the redeemed. 
We cannot, then, really, or in a Biblical way, preach 



26 The Reality of Faith. 

Christ crucified, unless, all the while, we keep our eye, 
also, upon human conduct and character. We are put 
in charge of the Gospel of the redemption of human 
life and society. This Gospel, rightly received, is at 
once the divinest, and the most human thing imaginable ; 
for it is the Gospel of the life — God's life of truth and 
purity, of sweetness and blessedness, come to earth, 
dwelling with man, the sufficient power and grace of 
our life. Christianity is not only, then, the most sacred, 
but also the most secular thing on earth. It has divine 
right in the midst of the business of the world. It 
cannot, without disloyalty to its divinest spirit, be 
divorced from the common life of man, and sundered 
from its vital relation to the business, the politics, and 
the conduct of men in the world. We are sometimes 
warned against secularizing overmuch our religion. We 
are disloyal to it if we do not seek to secularize it every 
day we live. Jesus Christ brought the kingdom of 
heaven down to the streets of Capernaum. He secular- 
ized divinity when he put from him the ceremonial of 
the Pharisees, and sat at meat with publicans and 
sinners. God, who is light, shone through his daily life 
with men. What the Church needs now to do is to 
bring the Christ, his Spirit and his righteousness, into 
the streets and the stores, along the lines of commerce, 
among the interchanges of trade, through the actual rela- 
tions of society, around the whole circumference of 
human nature and human life. There is not a solitary 
question of actual life and conduct before which Christ 
is not to be preached. And if we do not so confess 
Christ before men by entering in and possessing every- 



God's Self- Revelation Through Life. 27 

thing iu his name, then we shall not preach the real 
historic Christ, but only a theological Christ ; and the 
world is not to be saved by our doctrine of Christ, but 
by the real presence of Christ bidding its passion be 
still, casting out its devils, binding up its broken hearts, 
and healing its iniquities. 

This brings us directly to the third and last implica- 
tion of our text. Only through lives in real sympathy 
with God in Christ are we to receive the light of the 
world. I spoke just now of the theological Christ. 
I did not mean that the mystery of God in Christ is not 
to be the subject of theological inquiry; God forbid 
that, in our pulpits, the problems of divinity should not 
continue to be, as they always have been, the most 
stimulating, attractive, nay, exciting, subjects of rational 
inquiry and thought. Indeed, the deep things of God 
lie ever beneath the surface of our lives. The child will 
drop his first questions into them. We rock upon their 
depths in the midst of life's stress and tempest. In the 
calmer evening-time, old age, as it nears the other shore, 
still is borne upon the depths of the mystery of the 
wisdom of God. Every thoughtful man and woman — 
nay, every thoughtless man and woman, whom life lays 
hold of with its great mud of destiny — is compelled, at 
times, to turn theologian, and to think. To banish 
theology, then, from our pulpits as not practical, would 
be eventually to separate religion from life. But what 
I would insist upon is this : not that we must not the- 
ologize, but that we are to learn Christian truth first of 
all, and best of all, in that school where Jesus came to 
teach it, viz., the school of real life. The light must be 



28 The Reality of Faith, 

struck for us from the life. Our best light always is the 
kindling of the life into truth. It is from the meeting 
of God^s life through Christ with man^s life, with our 
own life, that the light shines. You cannot, by any 
possibility, know God in Christ simply by argument and 
much reasoning. You can find out in that way only 
how little we know, and how the circumference of the 
mystery around us widens with every increase of science. 
Through life to knowledge is the Christian way. This 
supreme law of knowledge through experience, holds 
both in general of all knowledge, and in particular of 
our acquaintance with those spiritual truths which are 
most worth our knowing. Let one or two particulars 
now answer for all. You say, " I do not understand what 
the theologians teach concerning the atonement.'' Well, 
you may have listened to many sermons upon God's 
chosen way of forgiving sin, and, as you confess, wdth 
little profit ; but there is a way of studying that doctrine 
of the cross by which God's method of reconciliation 
through Christ may become light to you. Go, study 
divine forgiveness through a real, persistent, self-sacri- 
ficing endeavor to forgive some one who has wronged 
you. Go, study the means of reconciliation by seeking 
to forgive and to forget the injury you have suffered. 
Find out how much must be involved in the forgiveness 
of sin for a perfect God, who has the righteousness of 
the whole universe to uphold, by learning what must be 
suffered — what must be waited for — what cannot be 
done — what may be done, at least, by unselfish love, by 
self-respect without self-pride — in restoring either for 
yourself or for some other a broken human tie, in 



God' s Self- Revelation Through Life. 29 

reuniting some life-relationship left sundered and bleed- 
ing by some cruel sin. Depend upon it, in this real way 
of life you will learn the doctrine of divine forgiveness 
as you never knew it before. 

And just one more instance. How shall we know, 
after all, that this world is not hollow-hearted — life fair 
only on the surface, and dead at heart ? Is all happi- 
ness superficial — life's brightness only the moment's 
breaking into light, upon the earth's surface, of forces 
that in themselves are cold and dark as space; and 
beneath the blooming surface again nothing but dust and 
darkness ? Who of us has not felt, at times, the tempta- 
tion to this utter unbelief — nay, to this hunger of heart 
after unfailing good and for beauty that does not pass from 
earth with the setting of the sun ? We believe in God ; 
but who of us has not felt, at times, the chill of this 
practical atheism — doubt of good — or, if not doubt, at 
least a certain heartlessness for life — a silence within us 
of hope — a certain daze and death of feeling under 
calamity, or when we stood dumb before death's cold, 
pitiless eye ? To continue in that state would be athe- 
ism. A life without hope is a life without God. 

How, then, shall we know Him ? In part the experi- 
ence of the soul-want of the living God is life's way 
toward God. I had almost said that this practical 
experience of atheism is the beginning of faith. Yet 
alas ! not always is it so ; for men may fall back again 
from trouble and sorrow into the forms of life in the 
world, and not know God who was so near them. But 
men also often pass from the discovery of their life's 
emptiness and need out to a faith in which they can live. 



30 The Reality of Faith. 

And this passing from darkness into light must always be 
through right conduct and character. The Christ will 
show God to us as not unto the w^orld, only as we would 
live not as the world lives. Go, and follow Jesus in his 
way of ministry among men, if you would know his 
Father and your Father. As God has come home to 
man through the life of Christ, so we are to draw near 
unto God through the Christian life. Men are never 
atheists when they are struggling to do some good deed 
for their fellowmen. Men forget their unbelief in the 
moments when they face death for country, or dash 
temptation from them in the kingliness of conscience. 
Atheists, if there are any, are atheists in the study with 
their slippers on ; or upon the platform, in the play of 
reason — not in real life ; not in the great sacrifices of 
duty ; not in the sublime hours of patriotism ; not in the 
holy sanctities of life's first love ; not in the moments 
when we stop from our own eager ambitions to bind up 
some human wound, or to make a little child happy. 
Conscience, love, honor, devotion — ^these are never 
doubters, never deniers, never without hope and without 
God ! These are the faithful believers in men's hearts. 
Our sins are the atheists in our lives. 

My text is unspeakably deeper and ampler than any 
sermon that may be preached upon it. The life is the 
light. If we will live true, noble. Christlike lives, 
doubt not God will reveal his truth and his goodness 
through them ; the endeavor so to live will bring us to 
Christ and the Father ; the Holy Spirit will come to us ; 
we shall find words of God in our lives, and at evening- 
time it shall be light. 



III. 

ULTIMATES OF KNOWLEDGE AND BEGIN- 
NINGS OF FAITH. 

*' ^lii! tof fenoto t!)at tf)£ Son of (5o& is tome, anb f)at^ jjibm us an 
unlJirstanbins, tf)at bt mag fenoto tinx li^al is Init, anir tec a« tn 
!)im libat is true, thm in f)is ^on Itsus €'Wst ^\iis is i^t ixut 
(Gtoibr, a:nibr eltcnal life." — i John v. 20. 

I WISH to place this text, which stands so calmly and so 
positively at the close of this epistle, over against a com- 
mon mood of men's minds at the present time, of which 
I was reminded in a conversation with a friend only the 
other day. The following tenor of remarks is true to 
the real state of mind of many thoughtful persons, and 
it is the duty of the ministers of Christ's Gospel, so far 
as possible, to bring to the light the real thoughts of 
men's hearts. That, at least, was what Jesus himself 
was always doing. I repeat then here, not the words 
exactly, but the substance of what more than once I have 
heard, as well as felt, as follows : I do not think life in 
the Middle Ages was so much inferior to life now ; I 
could almost wish that I had lived then in those ages of 
universal faith; men knew then what they were here 
for, and where they were going. They were not troubled 
with the unrest in which we live, which even Christian 
believers feel. I would willingly give up railroads and 

electricity, and the Brooklyn bridge, and all these things, 

31 



32 The Reality of Faith. 

if I could escape these modern questionings, and have 
again the restfulness of faith. If I only knew that we 
make our bodies, and our bodies do not compose us ; if 
I only knew that there is spirit, and a God, and immortal 
life ; if I knew ! And so over against this restlessness 
of mind, deep and earnest, yet unquiet also as the sea, 
over which every passing wind has power, and the spirits 
of doubt moan, I would place this firm, exalted text, 
which stands at the close of a whole range of sublime 
convictions : '^ We know him that is true, and we are in 
him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is 
the true God, and eternal life.'' 

How can we now reach such heights of assurance as 
are marked by these words of St. John ? 

The way indeed stands open back to the Middle Ages 
and their kind of faith for any who wish to follow it. 
They have only to join the Roman Catholic Church. 
And some have been driven by the spirit of unrest, 
haunting modern life, back into the medieval repose of 
Catholicism. We have no such authority up to which, 
when our souls are frightened, we can run for shelter. 
Protestantism, having once let loose the spirit of free 
inquiry, is bound to see all questions of faith and life 
freely and honestly through. Every interrogation-point 
which can be raised, has a right to stand up before our 
pulpits. Every question of life has a right to come and 
sit in the pews of a Protestant Church. We must know 
what we believe. We must teach our children no 
obedience less noble than obedience to truth. Congrega- 
tionalism, least of all, can have place for any pope. 

I shall proceed, then, to indicate the chief steps in a 



Ultimate s of Knowledge, 33 

way which leads toward the free yet restful confidence 
of our text. I shall give convictions and conclusions 
rather than reasonings; the arguments would fill 
volumes, but the line of conclusions may be traced in a 
single sermon. First of all, we need to go straight 
through our own experiences, thoughts, and questionings, 
until we find ourselves facing the ultimates of our life 
and knowledge. There are certain last things of human 
experience which we may reach, and beyond which we 
can go no farther. These I call ultimates of life and 
knowledge. Upon these, having done all, we may stand. 
The way for us to faith cannot be the way back to 
medieval authority, but it is back to these great ultimates 
of the human soul and human history. Many a young 
man comes now-a-days to church, if he comes at all, in 
what I may call a state of mental reserv^e ; and this 
resei^v'ed state of mind, in which many listen respectfully 
to the Gospel, is one of the real practical hindrances to 
clear, bright discipleship at the present time. It hinders 
the progress of the Church as the fogs of late have 
hindered navigation. And storms and breakers are not 
always needed, only the fog is enough oftimes to make 
castaways. Men in what I have just called this state of 
mental reserve listen to the great commandments of the 
Gospel, — repent, believe, confess Christ before men, — and 
while not intentionally or deliberately rejecting them, 
they receive them and lose sight of them in this great 
fog-bank of mental uncertainty w^hich lies in their minds 
all around the horizons of present and near duties. Most 
of these persons have not studied very far into religious 
questions ; many have not cared to go quietly searching 

3 



34 The Reality of Faith, 

through their own uncertainties. They simply sit back, 
in comfortable reserve from the preacher of the duty of 
a Christian profession, saying to themselves, " I do not 
know; perhaps I ought; but there is now so much 
uncertainty about everything that we used to believe ; 
very probably what the preacher says may be so ; but 
my friend the professor, or tlie doctor, or my neighbor 
who is a good deal of a scholar does not believe these 
things ; and, when I think of it, there are a great many 
doctrines taught in the Bible which I do not understand. 
I keep up the respectable habits of religion. I think 
the churches, on the whole, are useful for society, and I 
do not really want to believe in nothing." Back, then, 
let us force ourselves to the ultimates of our life ! Back 
in all honesty and urgency let us go, until we face " the 
flaming bounds of the universe ! " Let us not stop with 
any disputes by the way, or at any half-way resting- 
places. If I can find firm footing upon the ultimate 
facts of experience, then I can look out upon the sea of 
religious contentions, as the man who has gained the 
shore looks back upon the w^aves. If I have Apostolic 
standing upon the great facts of God's work on earth, I 
can have also Apostolic freedom and fearlessness what- 
ever wdnds may be astir. 

I find four ultimates, then, upon ^A'hich to stand ; four 
fundamentals of human life and knowledge from which 
to survey all passing clouds and turmoil. 

One of these ultimates — the one nearest to the com- 
mon sense of mankind, and which I only need to 
mention — is the final fact that there is some all-embracing 
Power in the universe. This is the last word which the 



Ultimates of Knowledge. 



senses, and the science of the senses, have to speak to us 
— force. There is one comprehensive sum of energy, 
one final fact of force, in the world. But when I look 
this physical ultimate of things in the face, and ask 
what it is, or how I have learned to give this name of 
power to it ; then I find myself standing before a second 
ultimate of knov\'ledge. That is the fact of intelligence. 
I cannot, in my thought, go before or behind that last 
fact of mind, and reason compels me to go up to it and 
admit it ; there is mind above matter ; there is intelli- 
gence running through things. Indeed, the universe 
seems to be steeped in thought. Everywhere law is a 
fact of reason in things. The more thoroughly men 
master the nature of matter, the nearer they seem to 
come out into the presence of something unseen and 
spiritual. I do not intend, at this point, to turn aside 
into an argument with materialism ; I am simply assert- 
ing that as matter of fact, however we may reason 
about it, every man of us does believe in his own 
rational self; and, knowing himself to be, does find the 
final fact of intelligence in the nature of things. Upon 
the shores, then, of this restless mystery of our life are 
standing, calm and eternal, these two ultimates of all 
knowledge. Power and Keason, Intelligence and Force ; — 
and they stand bound together — an intelligent Power, a 
Force of Mind in things. 

But there is another line of facts in our common 
experience, the end of which is not reached in these 
ultimates of science and philosophy. There is another 
direction of human life whose terminus I must seek. 
The familiar facts are these. You and I had not merely 



36 The Reality of Faith. 

a cause for our existence ; I had a mother, and you had 
before you a fact of love in the mother who gave you 
birth. Your infancy was cradled in another element 
than the forces of nature, or the protecting power of 
some intelligence. You were cradled in love ; and that 
love, which was your mother, is a fact of life as true and 
real, and, perhaps, infinitely deeper in its significance, 
than anything you have ever learned since through your 
eyes from the appearance of nature. And that fact of 
love in which you w^ere born, nay, in which the veriest 
heathen child is born, is not a passing, changing, tem- 
poral thing. It is one of the permanent facts of the 
creation. It is persistent as any force of nature. It is 
an elemental power of your being. Love breathes 
through life, and pervades history. It is the deathless 
heart of our mortality. Moreover, this fact of love in 
which our being is cradled, and in which, as in our true 
element, man finds himself, has in it law and empire. 
It introduces into our lives a commanding law. We 
know the law of love, and we know it as a law above 
nature and death. In obedience to this supreme author- 
ity men will even dare to die. There are, then, for us 
such realities as love, devotion, duty. The child, grow- 
ing out of its mother's arms, finds that from the bosom 
of love it has brought to life a sense of duty. The 
moral law becomes a felt omnipresence to us. It is 
always with us, a joy to us when we do well, a terror at 
our hearts when we do evil. It was before us and shall 
be after us. At the end of a large part of our experi- 
ence stands, then, this final fact of moral law. Only 
this is no mere commandment or restraint. It is rich 



Ultimates of Knozvledge. 2)7 

and beautiful and bright, as well as grand and com- 
manding. It is the ultimate of what is best and hap- 
piest, as well as dutiful, in life. It is the ultimate of all 
the familiar, sacred facts of motherhood and fatherhood, 
of obedience and trust, of helpfulness and affection, of 
all, in short, that makes man's life worth living ; it is, 
in one word, the ultimate law of love. 

And with this it might seem as though I had gone 
around the compass of our being, and said all that can be 
said of the last facts of our lives. But I have not. 
There is another ultimate before which I stand. There 
is another last fact of this world, which not only cannot 
be resolved into anything simpler than itself, and with 
which, therefore, we must rest, but which, also, is itself 
the truth abiding as the light of day over these funda- 
mental facts of our knowledge. It is the illumination 
of man's whole life. I refer, of course, to the character 
of Jesus Christ. The Person of the Christ is the ulti- 
mate fact of light in the history of man. 

We cannot resolve the character of Jesus into anything 
before itself. We cannot explain him by anything else 
in history. We cannot go beyond Christ in order to 
understand him. He is himself, alone among men, 
unique, original, most unlike man in those very 
moments and experiences when he is also most human ; 
he is, in one word, an ultimate fact of God in the world, 
up to which the eyes of all the generations look, and 
beyond whom we cannot go. Who shall declare his 
generation ? 

A few moments' reflection will suffice to make plain 
how much is meant in this recognition of Jesus Christ as 



38 The Reality of Faith, 

the final fact not to be explained by any others in human 
history. It is easy enough to explain the characters of 
men like ourselves. Our family-history gives an intel- 
ligible and sufficient basis for our personalities. We 
have our ancestors in ourselves. And we see ourselves 
in our children. Now the Gospels give two books of 
the genealogies of Jesus Clmst. There are long lists of 
names carefully recorded, as the Jews were wont to do, 
and running back for generations. Eead that family- 
record book; as you run down through those names, 
Abraham, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Zerubbabel, and 
the later ancestors, Eliud, Eleazar, Matthan, Joseph, 
would you think you were coming nearer, do you begin 
to expect Jesus who is called Christ? Who ever 
thought of explaining the Son of man by these Jewish 
genealogies ? The more definite we make the comparison 
between Jesus and men, the more striking appears his 
final unaccountableness upon the ordinary principles and 
by the common laws of human descent. We can bring 
all human genius into organic line with its ancestry, or 
into spiritual unity with its nationality or age. Take, 
for example, our own Emerson. His was a marked 
individual genius ; yet his biographers recognize in it 
the flowering of several generations of genuine New 
England characters. Emerson's striking picture of his 
aunt might almost serve as a frontispiece to his own 
life. Or, to go back in history, Rome and the Csesar 
explain each the other. Human nature in Greece, vexed 
by the sophists, must give birth both to an Aristotle and 
a Socrates. These two types of mind are constantly 
reproduced. And the Buddha is the incarnation of the 



Ultimate s of Knowledge. 39 

Oriental mind. But Jesus is something more than Judea 
incarnate. Jesus is something unknown on earth before 
incarnated in a most human life. He was in this world, 
but not of it. He was the fulfillment of the history of 
God in Israel, yet he was not the product of his times. 
There is something elemental about his power ; we can 
resolve his spirit into nothing else. He chose to call 
himself, not a Hebrew of the Hebrews, not a Greek of 
the Gentiles, but simply and solely the Son of man. 
And we can find no better name for him. He stands in 
the midst of history simply and solely himself — the 
man, the Son of man. He is for us an ultimate fact, 
then, unaccounted for by the lives of other men, 
unaccountable except by himself; as much as any element 
of nature is an original thing not to be explained by 
anything else that is made, so is the character of Jesus 
Christ elemental in history, the ultimate fact of God's 
presence with man. Observe, I am simply asserting 
now what I believe to be the solid fact, and I am not at 
present using the tests and arguments by means of which 
it may be made apparent that in the character of Jesus 
Christ we do reach a final spiritual fact. The reasons for 
this belief might be expanded into volumes, but they are 
not necessary to one who would look straight at the last 
realities of things. The simple Gospels, as we have them, 
and without any critical discussions, are sufficient to reveal 
a character mirrored in these narratives which they did 
not originate, any more than the glass originates the sun 
reflected in it. The Gospels themselves, without any 
concern about who wrote them, or the many problems 
incidentally suggested by them, are enough to reveal the 



40 The Reality of Faith. 

presence in this world of a Being who was not of this 
world, and whom the history of this earth does not 
explain. I go farther and say, even if you should break 
the Bible to pieces, the evidence of the ultimate spiritual 
personality of Jesus the Christ would not be destroyed. 
Break the glass to pieces, and you will not rid yourself 
of the evidence of the sun which shone in it. Still every 
fragment and bit of glass at your feet will throw its 
beam of light up into your eye. The critics cannot 
destroy the evidence of the Christ in the Scriptures. 
Neither does it explain the light to analyze carefully the 
glass, or to turn it over and see what is behind it. It is 
well to know all we can possibly learn concerning the 
way in which the Bible came to pass, and he is no friend 
of faith who would stop any inquisitive scholar from the 
most thorough criticism of the Scriptures. But the thing 
which the world has seen, and will continue to behold, is 
the light from above in the Christ of the Scriptures. 

No process of history, or theory of the Bible, or 
knowledge of the motley times in which Jesus came 
preaching the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven, does 
account for the person, or comprehend the work of Jesus 
Christ. And Christianity, the ever present Scripture of 
Christ's life and power, itself is the evidence still before 
our eyes of his Person and presence, even as the first dis- 
ciples beheld it, and marvelled, and worshipped before him. 

If any one wishes to examine further into this matter, 
and to convince himself whether this indeed be so, let me 
make to him one suggestion. Begin anew the study of 
Jesus' character with the aspects of it which come nearest 
to us and are most familiar to your own experience of 



Ultimates of Knozvledge. 41 

men. Begin not by looking away to the lieights of 
his mystery of being, but with the lesser scenes and 
minor incidents of his life — the easier slopes and lower 
levels of his greatness. Let the miracles pass at first. 
Leave out of thought for the moment the narratives of 
the nativity, and the resurrection; approach Christ in 
the midst of his daily intercourse, in the most common 
and human incidents of his work. You will find some- 
thing you never found before even in those. You will 
see something never seen on earth before even in those. 
The minor characteristics of Jesus are impressed with 
divinity. The little things of his human friendships are 
not of this world. The more imitable features of his 
character have still upon them a heavenly light. In his 
nearest approach to the common levels of our lives Jesus 
is still more than man. 

If we begin thus with the minor characteristics and 
little daily things of Jesus' life, and find even in these 
something beyond us all; then when we read of the 
miracles, they seem to fall into harmony with the man 
and his power ; and the beginning and the end of his life, 
which are contrary to all our experience of other men, 
seem to be perfectly in accordance with our experience of 
Jesus himself. So his whole life from beginning to end 
seems to be a harmony of God Avith men. It is a higher 
evolution than our lives. It can be understood only by 
itself. It is the final fact, the moral and spiritual 
ultimate of human history. 

Now, then, such being the fundamental facts of our 
knowledge — the ultimates of human experience — it is 
perfectly legitimate for us to build upon them ; and any 



42 The Reality of Faith. 

man who wishes to build his life upon the rock, and not 
upon the sands, will build upon them. A Power not 
ourselves u23on which we are dependent, — a first intel- 
ligence and love, source of all our reason and life of our 
heart, — and Jesus Christ, the final proof of God with us 
and for us, — such are the elemental realities upon which 
our souls should rest. He who stands upon these divine 
facts in the creation and in history shall not be con- 
founded. I know what it is to feel the foundations of 
all things sacred and true slipping from beneath one's 
feet. Who that has lived since the fathers fell asleep 
has not known this ? Who has not had moments at 
least of longing for the assurance of faith ? Happy are 
we, if we have learned what are the fundamentals of our 
life ; what are the true beginnings of knowledge ! 
Happy, if we have learned the lesson at once of humility, 
of wisdom, and of faith, and can plant our feet upon the 
firm, primal, divine facts of things, even while we are 
learning that we often do not understand, and can not 
answer life's daily question : How can these things be ? 
And it is our duty not to be driven from the elemental 
facts of God and Christ in the creation and in history 
simply by our vain imaginations as to how these things 
can be. My friends, the real difficulty with your faith 
and mine is usually not, as we are pleased to say, with 
our superior reasons, or our wise understandings ; it is 
with our imaginations. It is not because men can reason 
God out of his own universe successfully, but because 
they cannot imagine what God is, and is like, can give 
him no form and mode of being in their thoughts, that 
they can ever teach themselves to deny God's existence. 



Ultimates of Knowledge. 43 

No one would ever think of denying there is a God, if 
he eould only imagine what God is like. It is not 
because nature in our hearts does not believe in our own 
immortality, but because we cannot conceive of the man- 
ner of existence after death, that we are content to 
live as though this little bustle of a world were all of 
God's good providence for us. It is because it doth not 
yet appear what we shall be, that we doubt the future, 
and live as though this present were all. It is not the 
human reason, but the imagination, which is the sceptic. 
Hence, then, if we would reach something of John's 
assurance — this is the true God and eternal life — we must 
give heed to the word of warning which seems at first 
thought to stand disconnected from the rest of this text, 
but which is very necessary to it : Little children, keep 
yourselves from idols. That means for us, — You, who 
in the childlike spirit do rest upon these constant, home- 
like facts of God and Christ with men, keep yourselves 
from all vain forms and imaginations of your hearts. 
It is of the essence of idolatry really to lose faith in 
the endeavor to give form and imagined substance to 
things unseen and eternal. The heathen idolatry was 
one foolish imagination of divine things. Man betrayed 
his own spiritual faith by trying to give it visible form. 
The idols were often sensual and gross imaginations of 
God. So faith died at its own altars. Little children, 
keep yourselves from idols. Plant your feet upon the 
fundamental facts of God and the Gospel ; do not lose 
your faith in trying to give the unseen realities form 
and shape in your own vain imaginations. We knoAV 
that the divine essentials are ; we do not, and cannot con- 



44 The Reality of Faith, 

ceive how they are. Over against Nicodemus' question, 
How? Jesus put simply his spiritual affirmations that 
these spiritual births, and these heavenly truths, must be 
and are. We do know the divine elements of our life 
and history, and our immortality, though no master 
among us can tell us how these things can be. Still 
Jesus stands before us answering lifers every question 
with his " Verily, verily, I say unto you." There may 
be some man here who is kept from his own proper faith 
in the divine assertions of the Gospel of the kingdom of 
heaven, simply because he cannot free himself from the 
difficulties of his own imagination, and is not willing to 
believe in realities, in the most fundamental and final 
realities of experience, because they refuse to take form 
and visibility to his understanding. He will believe 
in God when he can see him like an idol. He will 
believe in his own soul when he can fashion a mode of 
understanding it. He will act upon his own immor- 
tality when he can grasp some tangible conception of it. 
When men say they will believe what they can under- 
stand, they may mean, — we would believe if we had some 
forms or idols upon which our faith could lay hands. 
" This is the true God and eternal life ; little children, 
keep yourselves from idols,'^ — from the idols of our o^n 
desires ; from the idols of our own imaginations ; from 
the idols of tradition and the schools. We need now for 
our own faith, and for the salvation of the faith of the 
world a theology without idols ; a Church without idols ; 
and every^vhere among Christians a childlikeness of 
heart before God, kept from the love of the fashion and 
forms of this world, which is idolatry. 



IV. 

THE DIFFICULTY OF NOT BELIEVING. 

" But nolbo, Riitx Ifiat ^t \)ixht knobjii (SolJ, or ratfjw aw knoltxiii of 
(DtotJ, i^oba turn 2^ a^ain to fi)t borak aniJ i^SBarlj xUmiixtjei, ioi)£wunto jot 
Ibtsin a^ain to it in ion&a^t? " — Gal. iv. 9. 

I HAVE been thinking how difficult it would be for us 
not to be Christians. It is hard, we say, to have faith ; 
but do we realize what a task a man imposes upon him- 
self if he attempts to live without faith? I know a 
man who commenced deliberately to unload himself, as 
he expressed it, of the beliefs which he had accumulated 
in his education. One belief after another he threw 
overboard. He sought to rid himself of everything 
which did not seem to him necessary to his very life. 
At last he came to one belief where he was convinced 
that he must stop. He must have a God. To abandon 
that faith would have been to him, not throwing over 
the cargo, but giving up the ship. That one belief he 
kept because it seemed to him to belong to the make of 
his own soul. To have gone beyond that point in divest- 
ing himself of his inherited beliefs would have been to 
tear out an integral part of himself. Is it really possible 
for any sincere man to live life through without reach- 
ing some point beyond which unbelief would be not 
merely the giving up another belief, but a cutting into 
the quick of the soul? Is not some faith one of 

45 



46 The Reality of Faith. 

the first vital necessities of the human reason and 
heart? 

I wish, then, this morning, to invert a very common 
way of reasoning about religion among men. Instead 
of treating a religious faith as though it were a good 
thing to be added to a man's moral capital in life, I 
would raise the question rather, whether a man will have 
caj)ital enough for life left if he lets a Christian faith go 
from him ? Instead of dwelling upon the difficulties in 
the way of a positive Christian faith, I would consider 
whether we shall not have to believe a great many things 
hard to receive, if we do not trust the Lord Jesus ? 
Men of the world will sometimes say to devout Chris- 
tians, " We cannot believe so many things as you do ; we 
do not know about these matters of faith/' I want to 
reverse the process, and to show how many things very 
hard to credit one must believe in order not to be a 
Christian. 

In reversing thus the ordinary reasoning of men with 
regard to the truths of religion, we follow the direction 
of the question which the Apostle Paul put to the Gala- 
tians. Evidently it seemed the strangest thing in the 
world to him that any persons to whom Christ had 
been preached, could think of living on this earth, from 
which Jesus had ascended, without a Christian faith. 
The hardest thing for the Apostle was, not to keep his 
faith in the risen Lord, but to conceive how any one to 
whom the Gospel had come, should ever dream of doing 
again without it. He asks the Galatians, in sincere 
astonishment : But now that ye have come to know God, 
or rather to be known of God, how turn ye back again 



The Difficulty of not Believing. 47 

to the weak and beggarly rudiments whereunto ye desire 
to be in bondage over again ? 

Let us consider how many vital things a man must 
give up in order not to be a Christian, first, in regard to 
faith in general, and then, more particularly, with regard 
to some of the chief elements of the Christian life. 

First, in order not to have faith, one must 
vacate a considerable portion of his own mental experi- 
ence. There is a large part of every man's self- 
consciousnass which is bound up with faith in realities 
beyond this present world of sights and sounds. It 
would be almost an impossible task for us to disentangle 
all faith in things divine and eternal from the elements 
of our self-consciousness. Our reasons have their roots 
in the divine. If these primal beliefs in God and 
immortality were simply results of argument, we might 
reason ourselves out of them ; but they are elements, 
rather, of our rational and conscious life, so that we can- 
not separate them wholly from ourselves. i^theists, 
after all, can only make believe not to believe. These 
elementary spiritual faiths are not colors laid on our 
life ; they are among the threads of which life itself is 
woven, inseparable from our self-consciousness. The 
man, therefore, who proposes not to have any faith, sets 
before himself the difficult task of unraveling his own 
life, and unmaking his own rational soul. Equally 
difficult would it prove for any man to make good, in 
his ow^n mind, the boast which shallow men sometimes 
utter, "I will believe only what I can understand.'^ 
As matter of fact every man does believe vastly more 
than he, or any one else on the face of the earth, ever 



48 The Reality of Faith. 

understood. You believe in oxygen, hydrogen, electricity, 
and the ultimate particles and forces of matter. You 
do not understand them any more than you understand 
what the wings of angels may be made of. All thought, 
after a few scientific measurements and experimental 
steps, leads straight out into the divine and eternal 
mystery in which our whole world of knowledge lies 
ensphered. Every man carries about in himself a world 
of being which he knows but in part. The common 
principles upon which men act every day in their busi- 
ness and their pleasures, spring directly out of some 
mental or moral fact which we take for granted. No 
man can walk down to his office in the morning without 
believing, at least, in a creed as long as this : I have 
the power to will that I will go ; I have power so to 
co-ordinate my intangible thoughts and desires with 
certain so-called nerve-currents, and a whole scheme and 
mechanism of physical forces, that I shall find myself 
walking, not at hap-hazard, but in a self-determined 
course, to the destination which I saw in my mind when 
I proposed to myself to start. And all this is a creed a 
great deal longer than any of us understand. Yet you 
walk by it, and do your business by it. Think, also, of 
those larger, outlying regions of our mental conscious- 
ness — those great shadow-lands out of which our con- 
scious thoughts and feelings emerge. Our best thoughts, 
which minister most to our life and love, come to us 
like the angels that appeared by the patriarch's tent — we 
know not from whence or how ; we know only that they 
are with us, and in their conversation life seems a holy 
and a happy thing. Men say they will conduct their 



The Difficulty of not Believing, 49 

lives only under the light of perfectly comprehensible 
and clear ideas. Very well ; but that portion of your 
thoughts which to you is clear as noon-day, like the 
noon-day, has also before it, and after it, its morning 
and its evening — its hour of dim, uncertain dawn, and 
its setting again in the universal mystery. I say, then, 
not to delay longer with illustrations of this point, that 
a man who tries to sail across this life to the other 
unknown shore without faith has a much more serious 
task to perform upon himself than simply to unload 
himself of so many accumulated beliefs ; he may throw 
overboard human traditions, but to get rid of faith he 
cannot stop with the cargo ; he will have to hew at the 
knees of the ship ; in fact, he will have to take out the 
keel : for all our knowledge, and all our life, so richly 
furnished, are built up on faith, as the ship is built into 
the keel. 

There is another tremendously present thing which 
would have to be put away from us in order that we 
might be able to live without faith, and that is the 
divine imperative of conscience. Something higher and 
better than we lays hold of us in conscience. This 
visible world, with its present kingdoms, vanishes before 
the in\dsible majesty of conscience. Though men mock 
conscience, and put it in chains, and leave it dishonored 
and forgotten in darkness, they are not safe from it ; it 
will prove " a moral Samson ; " and, while they make 
merry and feast, its hour shall surely come, and con- 
science, derided and put to shame, shall prove its 
strength, and triumph in the ruins of the evil soul. 

There are several other vital elements which must be 

4 



50 The Reality of Faith, 

sacrificed in the vain eifort to live without faith. One 
will have to leave out some of the most marked experi- 
ences of his life. The simple fact is, that the invisible 
powers are constantly laying hold of the life of man in 
the world. It would be an impossible task for us to 
account wholly for our own lives simply and solely upon 
natural causes. Super-sensible influences do mingle and 
blend with the sensible; providences are realities of 
human experience. Often we may have been able to 
single out and account for the several natural agencies 
in some affair of our own lives; we can name and 
number the agents who brought about the event ; but 
who brought the agents together ? What directing good- 
ness combined their action in our behalf? Who has 
iimed^ often so happily for us, the events of our lives ? 
The mechanism of the clock accounts for everything 
except the time it keeps. Who has regulated its 
motions ? Who has set its hands together on the hour ? 
Who has timed the clock? There is signal proof of 
providence in our lives in the frequent happy timing of 
events for us. So our whole human history was timed 
for the hour of the Christ. Nature may have been set 
to strike the alarm of miracles at the appointed hour of 
Christ's advent. At least history throughout has been 
tuned to redemption. A man, then, must believe that 
these providential times and seasons in his own life, as 
well as upon the larger scale of history, are accidental 
and meaningless, if he is to have any success in the 
attempt not to have faith lil^e a Christian. Then, again, 
although one succeeds for a while in letting all these 
things go from his thoughts, the powers of the world 



The Difficulty of not Believing. 51 

to come will quietly lie in wait for liim, and suddenly, 
perhaps, break in upon his life. It may be all going 
smoothly with him; he need take no thought of the 
other world around this little visible earth ; his mind is 
wholly in his business, and he is forgetting all of him- 
self that cannot be turned into dollars and cents ; but, 
unexpectedly, a great chasm opens in his pleasant path. 
The little child running before him has disappeared in 
death's unutterable void ; the wife walking his smooth 
life with him is no more by his side. Death is a 
sudden breaking of the world to come in upon this 
present world. A man may possibly look upon the face 
of death without feeling one throb of faith ; but to do 
that he must stop the beating of his own heart. 

To go on through life beside that chasm of death, 
walking alone henceforth along the brink of that preci- 
pice, where the life which yesterday went hand in hand 
with ours suddenly disappeared, and was lost, — how can 
we live with this silence and depth of death's mystery 
ever at our right hand, unless we can walk by faith ? — 
unless we believe in a life beyond the mystery and the 
silence, into which the soul of man, full of forces of 
thought and love, vanishes, dropping its garment of 
mortality only in the path at our feet ? Our souls, also, 
some day, shall take wing and fly away. 

There is another side of our experience, which I will 
just mention, from which one must cut himself loose, if 
he would have any success in not belonging to a Christian 
world ; he must break off his fellowship with the truest 
and best life of humanity. The fact here in point is, 
that very much as we are born into a human society, and 



52 The Reality of Faith, 

have the birthright of citizenship in our country; so we 
are born also into a kingdom of souls, and have a higher 
citizenship in the spiritual realm. The history of man 
is not merely, nor chiefly, political ; it is religious. The 
history of the kingdom of redemption is the paramount 
part of human history. Other history, what we call 
profane history, is the form and shaping of events only ; 
the substance of history is its spiritual progress; the 
issue of it, and the main thing in it all along, is redemp- 
tion. If, then, one wants not to be a Christian believer, 
a citizen of a world becoming Christian, he will have to 
begin by denying himself a goodly fellowship. The 
worldling will be obliged to keep his little venture of a 
life close to the material side, this tangible shore of 
things, in the shallow eddies and side-currents, not out 
in the deeper currents of events, in the main movement 
of history, where go the strong and the noble who have 
committed their lives wholly to God's purpose which 
beneath all flows steadily on toward the fulness of the 
eternal redemption. Not to let one's self be carried on 
by a Christian faith is to throw one's life out of the best 
and purest, and the most powerful sympathy and life of 
humanity. One must deny the brightest and happiest 
side of this present world if he would deny the Christian 
faith of the world. 

Let us consider further how much one will have to 
believe in order not to be a Christian, in relation to 
some particulars of the Christian life. One vital element 
of the Christian life is trust in the goodness of the 
heavenly Father. We do not conceal from ourselves, 
we cannot, that this is a trust written often across the 



The Difficulty of not Believing. 53 

face of events in our lives which seem to contradict 
it. As Christians we believe in the sunny side, that is, 
in the divine side, of everything. We say it is only our 
present position in the shadow, or under some cloud, 
which prevents our seeing the bright and eternal side of 
it. Wait, and we shall see the goodness of the Lord. 

We were sailing one afternoon with the broken coast of 
Maine in the distance projecting upon our horizon. A 
black thunder-cloud gathered in shore over the hill-tops. 
We could see the play of the lightnings, and the waters 
breaking from the cloud. That was all that the villagers 
and the fishermen along the shore could have seen. But 
we, at our distance, beheld also the untroubled sun in the 
clear sky above ; its beams struck the edges of that heavy 
mass of vapors, and above the darkness and the light- 
nings we could see the upper side of the cloud turn to 
gold ; and, even while it was blackness and fear to those 
below, its pinnacles and towers were shining before our 
eyes like the city of God descending from heaven. Thus 
Christian faith beholds also the heavenly side of this 
world's storm and darkness. You tell me it is hard to 
keep such faith. Yes, it is hard. There must be the 
victory of faith overcoming the world. But did you 
ever sit down and recount what hard things you must 
believe, and how many, in order not to have anything 
of Jesus' faith in the Father ? Have you ever counted 
the cost of the sacrifice which you must make to give up 
even the little faith of a disciple ? Think of it. In 
order not to believe in the goodness of God, you must 
begin by believing against every instinct of life and health 
in you that it would have been better for you never to 



54 The Reality of Faith. 

have been born ; that the first glad laughter of childhood 
is false to the heart of things ; that every ray of joy 
which may have come to earth is meaningless and vain ; 
that human happiness is an exquisite mockery of malevo- 
lence devised to make us in the end more conscious of 
misery ; that man was made for sickness, and health is 
the accident ; that life was invented on purpose for the 
pain of death ; that the most noble powers of the mind 
are the most ingenious devices of the adversary ; that 
memory was contrived as an instrument of human torture ; 
that imagination has its highest use in bringing us all 
our lives under the bondage of fear ; that our human 
hearts, in short, were made capable of love and the pure 
delights of unselfish friendship, simply that by means of 
them death might torment us ; and that all this world 
of beauty wears every fresh morning an expression of 
happiness, and at evening a smile of peace, only that those 
who come nearest nature's heart may be of all men the 
most deceived and the most miserable ! These things, 
and more like these, a man must believe, if he would 
not cherish the faith of Jesus in our heavenly Father. 

Take as another instance the Christian belief in our 
personal sinfulness and need of forgiveness. How many 
thoughts of the heart must one forget hot to believe that? 
Beloved, if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our 
heart, and knoweth all things. He who makes light of 
the fact of sin, who seeks to empty of its convincing power 
our heart-consciousness of sin, may ask us to believe any- 
thing else that he pleases ; for if a man can really believe 
that he is sinless, and in no need of a divine forgiveness 
and help, nothing else could be difficult for him to credit. 



The Difficulty of not Believing. 55 

I pass to two other examples. IMen say it is hard 
to believe in an atonement. Perhaps it may be in 
some of our human philosophies of God's method of 
reconciling the world; but not to believe in Jesus' 
word that the Son of man has power on earth to 
forgive sin, would require us to believe some things 
about God which it would be very hard for us to hold 
of the Creator of our hearts. Even a human govern- 
ment would be incomplete unless, in some hand, there 
should be lodged some power of pardon. Not to believe 
in the authority of God himself over the execution of 
his own law is to believe that God's government is not 
so perfect as man's. Or, to take the subject up to a 
higher plane, where I much prefer to study it, our human 
love can sometimes find for itself a way of forgiveness 
which it will follow without dimming its own purity, or 
losing its own self-respect, though it be for it a way of 
tears. To believe, then, that the God of love can find 
no way of atonement for sin, though it be the way of 
the Cross, is to believe that man's heart is diviner than 
God's. Yes, to recognize and praise human charity, 
forgiveness, and grace; to own the power of human 
love to raise the fallen, and to give the life of the strong 
and the pure for the sinful and the weak ; and then not 
to believe that God can do the same, and will, and that, 
not after the measure of our human imperfection, but 
according to his infinite goodness, and in his own 
perfect and complete way of the Cross — this faith, I say, 
in man's power of forgiveness, together with such faith- 
lessness in God's work of forgiving the sin of the world, 
is an inconsistency of moral reasoning and a denial of 



56 The Reality of Faith. 

all divine revelation. But he who will not believe in 
the Gospel of forgiveness, if he believes at all in God, 
must set himself to solve this contradiction — he gives 
up a Christian faith only to take upon himself a belief 
about God too monstrous for the human heart to keep. 

The other remaining point which I Avill mention is 
the Christian belief in the last judgment. In a similar 
manner it may be shown that if we would rid ourselves 
of that belief, we must fortify ourselves against it with 
a great mass of beliefs difficult for us to receive. As 
Christians, we may hold that a God of justice and love, 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, will deal according 
to his full divine perfection with every soul of man, and 
that all must appear at last before the same judgment- 
seat, the judgment-seat of Christ. We must believe 
that God^s government of the world is not two systems 
— a system of nature and a system of grace, each com- 
plete in itself, and each capable of running on by itself 
forever, to the eternal satisfaction of the Father of all. 
God has, we believe, one system for all souls — ^the system 
for which nature is preparatory, the final system of his 
grace. All must stand before the judgment-seat of 
Christ. Know^ing that Christ is to be the Judge of all 
men, as Christian believers we can postpone any questions 
about the judgment-day which may be asked, but not 
answered now, until his perfect will shall be made plain ; 
meanwhile telling to one another, if we please, our own 
speculations as the child^s guesses concerning the 
Father's way and wisdom, and refusing to allow any 
man to overburden our Christian faitli with his earthly 
imaginations and temporal logic of eternity. But surely 



TJu Difficulty of not Believing, 57 

everything in this world would be left at loose ends, and 
all our instincts of justice, righteousness, and love 
thrown into conftision, if we should attempt to Avrench 
the substance of this Christian faith in the judgment 
to come from our experience of this present life. Not to 
believe in it requires a great task of reason and con- 
science ; for then one must believe that there is no moral 
order, as there is plainly a natural order of things ; one 
must then believe that the one constant undertone of 
justice in man's consciousness is a false note of life ; that 
the first laws of things are but principles of eternal dis- 
cord ; that man's whole moral Kfe and history, in short, 
is meaningless and worthless. You say it is a terrible 
thing to believe in the judgment to come ; yes, but it is 
a more fearful thing not to believe in it. 

Not to prolong these illustrations of my argument, I 
want to put one or two thoughts before you in conclusion. 
The man of the world usually does not live consistently 
up to his own creed. Unbelief saves itself from practical 
contempt by really living on more faith than it allows. It 
is said that as Christians we do not live up to our own 
faith, and we do not. It would be a happier world if we 
did. We should be better men if we did. Every good 
work would prosper, and this would be the grandest mis- 
sionary age of Christian history, if we did. If all the 
churches should live up to the edges even of the faith of 
the Son of God, jealousies and unseemly strife among 
brethren would cease; peace and righteousness would 
abound, love would reign in liberty, if the world were 
really Christian, as so much of it is becoming nominally 
Christian. Nominally Christian even, it is a better world 



58 The Reality of Faith. 

than it ever was before ; Christianity fully realized will be 
this earth's millenium. But what if unbelief should live 
up to its creed? Inconsistent Christendom is a vast 
improvement over consistent paganism. Men say, Let 
Christians be honest in living their faiths. May God 
help us so to do ! But let us be thankful that w^orld- 
liness does not, and by God's grace cannot, live out to 
the honest end its own creed. Let us be thankful that 
it is not so easy for men to rob themselves of all faith in 
divine things, and live as though there were no God, and 
no Christ, and no hereafter. Let us be thankful that 
God in his providence and grace does make the short 
creed of the atheist the most difficult of all creeds to 
subscribe honestly to, and a consistently worldly life of 
all lives the most impossible and wretched. But right 
here lies the real difficulty with many of us. The creed 
of the world, though it does require us to believe a great 
many things hard to receive, is an indecisive creed which 
does not demand of those who profess it constant and 
consistent effort to live up to it. The creed of the world 
is yea and nay ; the creed of the Christ is one constant 
spiritual affirmation ; — In him, says the Apostle, was yea. 
Christian faith is a will to do God's will. It is to do 
the truth. It does require decision and confession of 
Christ. It requires daily watchfulness and growth of 
soul in those who will live by it. Hence many prefer to 
stay under the hard terms of the world's creed which 
costs them at least no great decision, self-denial, or con- 
version, in order to submit to it. Nevertheless, they 
who do come, to Jesus, and take up their lives in his 
creed of trust and love, although they give up all to fol- 



The Difficulty of not Believing. 59 

low him, find his service easy and his burden light. As 
oiu' text puts it, they were in bondage to them which by 
nature are no gods ; for the gods of this world are no 
gods ; there is no truth or reality in them ; worldliness is 
idolatry, and the creed of worldliness is superstition — ^the 
worship, that is, of forms of good, not the possession of 
the substance of things hoped for ; but now as Christians 
they " have come to know God f all their experience of 
life grows more and more into their Christian knowledge 
of God ; or rather they have come " to be known of God ; " 
for God is before us in everything ; we are first known 
of him, and we then recognize him in our own thoughts 
and lives ; we love him because he first loved us ; he is 
first before us, forgiving the sin of the w^orld, and then 
we know that we are forgiven ; — now that as Christians 
we have come to know God, or rather to be known of 
God, how can any of us turn back again to the weak 
and beggarly rudiments — the enslaving beliefs of this 
world, or desire to be in bondage over again? Let 
others stumble through life as they may \vdth nothing 
but the world's inharmonious creed in their hearts, and 
no thought or plan of life reaching out beyond these 
earthly horizons into the sunny distance of eternity ; as 
for us, we will walk in the liberty of Christ, finding his 
creed as we go down through the years to be the 
harmony of all true words and happy voices, and a song 
in the heart in the night of death. 



V. 

JESUS' VIEW OF LIFE. 

"^crorJjiit5 to CtriJSl 3tsu8." — Romans xv. 5. 

You have felt often a strange fascination as you have 
stood looking out upon the open sea. A wave flashing 
far out in the sunshine, the depths breaking into a 
moment's foam at your feet; the strong voice of the 
rising tide and the moan of the receding waters; the 
restless motion, the deeper peace; the vastness, the 
power, the vague, boundless distance in which sea and 
sky run together and are lost, — all held you to the spot 
as though you were in an infinite presence, and stirred 
within you thoughts for which you had no words. But 
there is one object which moves with still deeper power, 
and holds with more potent fascination the man who has 
eyes to look upon it, and a soul to echo to it ; and that 
is the mystery of human life. When a man stands 
looking into a sea of human faces, he is in the presence 
of what power, and vastness of possibilities, and deep 
things of God ! When a man stands looking, as I do 
now, into the faces of his fellow-men, he stands before 
what worlds of thought, and histories of souls, and 
powers of endless life ! Behind every eye into which he 
looks is an immortal soul ! Beneath every face is veiled 
a deathless spirit ! We do not know the life before us. 
We cannot know it. It is too great and boundless. 
60 



Jesus View of Life. 6i 

Even the few circles of human histories which we think 
we have measured and known — our personal acquaint- 
ances — sweep out beyond our view into the hereafter. 
And even within the lines of our present experience of 
the world, what we know of it is but little of the life 
and thought, the care and pain, the love and sorrow, in 
the midst of which we dwell. When we stand before 
real life ; when w^e think of what it is ; when in quick 
succession we let the faces of those whom we have known 
pass before us, each wdth its own story or hope ; when 
we listen and hear coming to us from far and near life's 
many voices — its laughter and its tragedies, its loud 
ambitions and its prayers for peace, its daily cries of 
want and Babel of confusions ; we can hardly endure 
thinking of its burden and its mystery; we turn for 
relief to our present duty, or the little thing of the 
moment's occupation, putting away from us the thought 
of what is our life. If any one of us could really see 
and know, as we believe God sees and knows, the lives of 
a single company of human beings — such as I am now 
looking upon — Avith all that is involved in those lives — 
their past, their present, their future, all the lives of 
others knit together, or torn from theirs, and the eternal 
possibilities in those human souls, I do not believe our 
hiunan sympathies could contain such revelations. The 
Scripture tells us that no man can see God and live. 
Perhaps no one of us could see man even, as God sees 
him, and not be overpowered by the disclosure of sin, 
and suffering, and need, of love, and grace, and hope. 
The novelist holds up before us a little of this complex, 
boundless whole of life, and our sympathies are stirred 



62 The Reality of Faith. 

to the depths by a vivid picture of a fragment of it. 
But there will always be need of the novelist with his 
eye for life, because the story of life is too great ever to 
be told. The philosopher stands coolly looking over the 
tides of human affairs, seeking to determine their metes 
and bounds, but what are his statistics to life ? Real life 
in its laughter and its woes remains larger and deeper 
than all our philosophy of it. We have not succeeded 
in reducing so much as the little life of the child of 
yesterday to a science — still less the soul of a man. It 
escapes our definitions. We cannot measure a life. You 
think that you will hold a whole system of divinity in 
your iron logic ; I ask you to comprehend the life of a 
little child in your thought of it. But what then? 
Must I remain simply a perplexed spectator of life, as 
experience grows, becoming indifferent to this whirl and 
confusion of things which I cannot alter or even under- 
stand? Or must I plunge into the world as it goes, 
seizing what I can, keeping on the surface for my pass- 
ing hour, thoughtless of what has been before or may be 
after me ? Or, at best, must I be content with this little 
eddy of time in which I find myself, taking as easily as 
I can the motion of things around me, being satisfied 
with what I have, living as long and as pleasantly as I 
may until the bright bubble of my home also breaks into 
the great all, and life flows on as before Avithout me and 
mine. 

My friends, I have been trying thus to put into words 
thoughts and feelings which often do come to us half 
consciously, half intelligibly, numbing sometimes our 
hearts, or shadowing us for moments until we break 



Jesus View of Life. 63 

away from them in some careless laughter, or turn to 
recover our strength of purpose in our work in the 
world. Often as we have listened, while some friend 
has quietly told us of stories of life which w^ere fraught 
with strangeness, or we have seen some sudden disclosure 
of the evils of life waiting around us, or our own past 
has come like a dream before us, we have felt this 
question asking itself in our hearts, — What is your life ? 
And we have thought, like the Apostle, of the vapor 
gathered out of the viewless air, catching a moment's 
light, and as quickly vanishing whence it came. Or a 
single word, a moment's quick glance may have disclosed 
to us some hidden care or anxiety beneath some pleasant 
surface of a life. I have looked out at sea and watched 
for many minutes the calm, unbroken surface of the 
water. And then, where all seemed safe and sunny, a 
slight roll of the tide revealed what only one who 
happened to be looking just at that moment would have 
noticed, a sunken reef, broken and tangled with sea- 
weed — a point of restlessness always there for the waters 
to vex themselves over. We have such glimpses at times, 
if we are observant, even into lives which, for the most 
part, seem undisturbed and bright. And though one 
tries to hold at arm's length from him all feeling for life, 
some Kttle thing may bring it upon him unawares. Men 
and w^omen and children are not so many volumes of 
physiology ; they are bundles of life feeling themselves 
in every nerve; they are not automatons, however 
mechanical their habits of life may become; and the 
only thing which can take all color of sentiment and 
sympathy for life out of human hearts is death. I take 



64 The Reality of Faith, 

it for granted, then, that we, all of us, as we have listened 
to stories of real life, or entered for moments of sympathy, 
at least, into other people's minds and moods, have felt 
coming over us this wonder and awe, and sense of 
strangeness of life. We have felt, if we have not said, 
What does it all mean ? What is it worth ? How shall 
people live? Is there any way of life perfect and 
sufficient for all? Or must we go stumbling about 
among things, ourselves but accidents of being, gifted by 
chance with knowledge that we live and die ? I think 
that such questionings of soul in view of life come to us 
not only as we grow older, or when we are tired, but 
also they sometimes startle us in the first freshness of 
youth ; I have heard them rising in momentary questions 
of children, deep sometimes as life ; and in after years 
only a slight jostle from outward things will stir often the 
soul of man with a strange consciousness of being. What 
is the true life ? Is there any reason and method of God 
in it ? Shall this confusion and hurry of a world ever 
become order, and be at rest? You had some such 
thoughts and feelings when your mother died, and your 
childhood was broken. You had them when you had 
been chasing eagerly after your first ambition, and awoke 
to find it was naught. You had such thoughts and 
questions of soul when you stood hesitating, yet com- 
pelled to choose your own way, and to face your own 
responsibility of a life. Such thoughts of life's emptiness 
have come at times when all was going prosperously with 
you ; and also when you were buffeting with circum- 
stance. You have such thoughts and feelings of life 
because you are made in the image of God, and can never 



Jesus View of Life. 65 

rest satisfied until you find the substance of things hoped 
for. You may throw yourself into business, and let the 
world around you suck out your own soul ; but even 
business, though it fills a man's thoughts for a while, 
cannot be done by any man when he is dying; and 
though we may not care now to take time to think of 
these things of the soul, every man of us will have to 
take time to die ; and amid the thickening shadows of 
the last hour, the old, haunting questions of life, often 
driven aAvay, if never before manfully met, may return, 
a legion of them, worse than before. 

I have been dwelling thus upon these our common 
human thoughts and feelings with regard to life and 
death, because I wish now to go with such thoughts of 
our hearts to the one man of men who seemed to stand 
above all this our human weakness, ignorance, and 
doubt ; the man who alone of all men has said, in full 
view of this great, restless mystery of our life, — I know. 
How did the Christ look upon the lives of men ? Did 
he stand before life, spell-bound and awed, like a child 
before the ocean? Was this many- voiced, multiform, 
endless complexity of life, which we see, in which we 
are tossed about, of which at times even the bravest of 
us grow weary at heart, to him also endless confusion of 
joy and sorrow, a tumult of cloud and sunshine — a 
somethhig without method, or meaning, or purpose, or 
end ? What was our life to Jesus ? We may be sure 
that he saw all these changes, and strange minglings of 
comedies and tragedies, which so confuse and exhaust us. 
We may be sure that no novelist, nay, not all the novel- 
ists or poets who have had insight into hearts, seen 
J 5 



66 The Reality of Faith. 

characters, and made miniatures in their stories of the 
world around them, ever understood men, or took in at a 
glance the histories of human souls, or saw to the end, in 
its last scene, the drama of human history, as did the Son 
of man who needed not that any should tell him of men, 
for he knew what was in man. AYe may be sure, then, 
that these thoughts of our hearts about life, such thoughts 
as I have been trying to suggest in words, w^ere perfectly 
familiar to Jesus of Nazareth. He knew what his dis- 
ciples were thinking about, as they went from city to city 
and through the villages with him. He knew the world 
of men. If we feel at times the myriad multiplicity and 
infinite confusions of life, and wonder what it all means 
and is worth ; we may be perfectly sure that the most 
sensitive and receptive soul that ever was found in 
fashion as a man felt life as we never have. He was 
touched, says the record, with a feeling of our infirmities. 
Indeed, all that we see in the world around us — youth, 
laughter, love, hope, vanity, passion, evil, death — all 
these powers of light and darkness which we know — 
were making and marring the life upon which Jesus 
looked ; every synagogue which he entered was a bit of 
the same problem of humanity of which our lives are 
parts. You may be sure, then, that you never had an 
experience, a feeling, or a thought about life and death, 
which in its real nature and meaning was not perfectly 
known and familiar to Jesus Christ. He measured in 
his own experience our temptations, and his life took in 
Cana of Galilee, a sick room in Capernaum, tlie market- 
place before the temple, the streets of the cit}-, the country 
towns by the sea, the master in Israel, the multitude of 



Jesus View of Life. 6 J 



the people, the whole world of his day, and of all day; 
our world-age, and God's eternity. 

Remembering thus that Jesus lived as never poet, 
philosopher, or novelist has lived, in the real world of 
human motives and hearts, with our real human life a 
daily transparency before his eye, open now these Gospels, 
and see if you can find there in Jesus^ view of our 
life, in his thought of us, any such feelings or question- 
ings as I have been expressing in this sermon — any 
such sense of the emptiness, vanity, strangeness of life, as 
Ave have often felt resting like a shadow over our 
thoughts? Did not he listen to stories of lives as 
strange and sad as any we have ever heard ? Did not 
he look upon things as contradictory to goodness and 
God as anything we have ever seen under the sun ? And 
Avith purer eyes ? Did not he feel with larger sympathy 
and warmer heart the broken, tangled, bleeding lives of 
men ? Did not he bear the sin of the world ? Where, 
then, is our human w^ord of doubt among his words ? 
Where is the echo of man's despair among the sayings 
of our Lord? Where, in his conversation with his 
friends, can you catch a note of that minor key which 
runs through our common speech of life? He could 
weep with those Avho mourned ; but he spake and thought 
of life and the resurrection before the grave of Lazarus. 
Read over these Gospels carefully, and where among Jesus' 
words will you find even the interrogation-point of our 
ignorance? Upon what parable of the Lord rest the 
shadows which come and go over all our poetry of life ? 
What discourse of his fortifies itself by the arguments, 
laboriously heaped up, with which our faith betrays its 



68 The Reality of Faith. 

own fear ? Read Tennyson's In Memoriam ; and then 
read the story of Jesus' words at Bethany. Read 
Matthew Arnold's poems ; and then read Jesus' para- 
bles. Read Herbert Spencer's First Principles, and then 
read Jesus' single discourse with the master in Israel. 
Remember, you cannot say that Jesus Christ did not 
know our unbelief. You cannot say that he did not 
understand our sense of life's mystery and brokenness. 
He saw it all in Mary's tears. He read it in the 
thoughts of disciples' hearts. He heard it in Nicodemus' 
hard question ; — How can these things be ? Why, then, 
did he never reproduce our common human weariness 
and doubt in his thought of life ? Why did he not show 
himself to be a man like one of us, as he wrestled there 
among men with all their burdens and their woes ? Why 
was there not a word, or note, or tone, or far-off echo of 
such human sense of weakness, wonder, hungry doubt 
as life brings so often to our lips, ever heard in all his 
wondrous life of toil and sympathy with man ? Who is 
He whose feet tread our common ways, whose spirit 
dwells above the clouds ? Behold the man ! Behold 
Jesus the Lord of life ! Behold the Son of man On earth 
who is in Heaven ! He looks out upon this restless, age- 
long mystery of our existence. But not as we walk 
insignificant upon the beach before the ocean. He stands 
before our life in the consciousness of power. He walks 
upon the sea, and the winds and the waves obey him. 
Not upon the sea of Galilee alone ! Upon the sea of 
life ! Its winds and waves obey him. He stands before 
our life. Its sin and woe are the burden and the sorrow 
of the Christ ; but its meaning is no unknown voice to 



Jesus View of Life. 69 

him. It is not an endless wonder to him. He sees our 
life surrounded by the living God. He sees, beneath our 
world, undergirding it, God^s mighty purpose. He sees 
above the righteous Father. He sees the calm of 
eternity. Nay, as you may have looked into a troubled 
pool of waters, and seen shimmering in broken lines 
beneath its wind-stirred surface the reflection of the 
skies, so this man sees the promise of the kingdom of 
heaven even in troubled Judea. And knowing life 
better than you or I do, knowing such things as you 
may have heard yesterday, or may experience to-morrow — 
enough sometimes to make men wonder whether there 
be a God, or truth, or anything of worth, — Jesus Christ, 
in full, open view of all life, said : " Let not your heart be 
troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in God ; 
believe also in me.'' 

We begin to come now in sight of the conclusion 
to which I wish to lead. I have just been speak- 
ing of Jesus' perfect human knowledge of men, and 
all that enters into our comedy and tragedy of a 
world. I have asked you also to observe, and to 
verify by reading the Gospels, the most singular and 
significant fact that with all this knowledge of humanity 
Jesus had in himself none of the doubt, the fear, the 
sense of strangeness, which is our common human 
inheritance. The evangelists could not possibly have 
omitted this common human characteristic if the character 
of Jesus had been the creation of their own imaginations. 
You will find shadow after shadow of our human 
questioning crossing the path of Buddha, and lingering 
upon the heights of human genius ; but not the shadow of 



70 The Reality of Faith. 

a passing doubt or fear over all Jesus' conversation with 
men. How could the Son of man look thus in the joy 
and triumph of a God upon such a strange thing as our 
life is ? It was because he knew what he was sent from 
God to do. It was because he knew what his own life 
w^as to be for the world. It was because he saw the 
coming order, and the all-sufficient grace for life. It 
was because he knew that human life was not a hopeless 
mystery to the love of God, but from the beginning was 
redeemed and glorified. It was because he knew that 
his mighty works of healing, at which the people 
marveled, were but the virtue which had gone forth from 
the fringes and hem of his robe who was to walk in the 
power of his Spirit through human history, making all 
things new. It was because he knew that he was Lord 
of the creation from before the foundation of the world, 
and the world sooner or later is to be according to 
Christ ! According to Christ ! That is the key- word 
for the interpretation of the creation. Everything comes 
right, as it takes form and being according to Christ. 
Everything in life or death shall be well, as it ends in 
accordance with Christ. This is the key-note for the 
final harmony, — According to Christ ! This, then, is our 
simple Christian understanding of life. We do not pre- 
tend to explain why things are as they are. We do 
know, since the Cross and Pentecost, which way the 
whole is moving. It is toward Christ and his judgment- 
throne. We do not know how all things are to be made 
right ; but we do know that there has been given us a 
law of life which is sufficient. 

What is given us in these Gospels is not a revelation 



Jesus' View of Life, 71 

of all mysteries ; but what we need much more than 
that, a perfect method of living according to Christ; 
that is our sufficient and our infallible rule of faith and 
practice. We shall understand life at last, we shall find 
all its shadows turned to light by and by, if we take up 
our lives and seek to live them day by day according to 
Christ. This is a method by which every man may 
order his life. For it is not a law of commandments, 
written in a dead tongue ; it is a living spirit. Every 
man w^ho can read the New Testament, can begin, if he 
chooses, to order his life according to Christ. He may 
not understand the doctrines. He may not have satis- 
fied his mind with regard to many questions concerning 
the Bible. But when he goes down to his office or store, 
and looks his brother-man in the face, he may know 
what things are honest, and of good report, according to 
Jesus Christ. When he goes to his home, he may know 
what manner of life there is according to Christ. When 
he sees any want of men, he may know how he ought to 
help, a<Jcording to Christ. And when he is with him- 
self, he may know how to bring his own imaginations 
into subjection, according to Christ. And when any 
temptation assails him, he may know, what he ought to 
do with all his might, according to Christ. And when 
men wrong him, and the world is hard, he may know, 
too, of what spirit and temper he ought to be, according 
to Christ. Yes, and when trouble comes, or sickness, or 
we near the end, then we may know how we need not 
fear, nor be troubled, according to Christ. And in our 
churches, too, we may be of many minds, on many sub- 
jects, but we ought to know also how to be of the same 



72 The Reality of Faith, 

mind, if we are willing to think and to judge all things 
by this one infallible rule, according to Christ. The new 
era is dawning when in all our churches, and upon the 
whole white missionary field of the world, more than 
ever before we are to labor, to build, and to rejoice, 
according to this all-sufficient rule — Jesus Christ. The 
waste, the rivalries, the fears will go ; the grand triumph- 
ant unity of the church in the spirit will come ; as we 
learn more and more to do our work, and think our 
thought, and live our lives, by no other rule, in no 
method less sure and noble than simply this, according 
to Christ. And if this be our endeavor, if we are will- 
ing to adopt this only worthy and sufficient method of a 
human life, and would live according to Christ, then why, 
in all honesty and sincerity, should we not stand up and 
say so in the confession of his name ? Not as though 
we had already attained, either were already perfect. 
God knows we are not. But we would live after the 
liighest and the best. We would find our lives accord- 
ing to Christ. Then let us, in a humble, manly way, 
confess him before men, and seek for the grace of life at 
the Lord's table. 



VI. 

REAL CHRISTIANITY. 

"QDtat fiooif i\\in% Wt^ ^^s xommiltjlbf uitto t!)« fiuarir ti&tfluigii^ tt-e 
l^ols (Ccbost ini&ixt Jbin^IUtib m U5."— 2 Tim. i. 14. 

The providence of God requires all Christians and all 
Churches to show what Christianity really is. I do not 
mean that good men have not always since the days of 
Pentecost been required to do this ; I do not mean that 
the generations of believers, martyrs, and saints, have 
not witnessed a good confession in the name of Christ ; 
but I do mean that Christian history has not yet real- 
ized what Christianity fully is, and that it is our high 
calling from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ to show still further to the whole world what 
Christianity is. Christianity is a larger and better thing 
than Christendom yet knows. It was the saying of 
a Church father that we are "to live according to 
Christianity." When men have learned to live according 
to Christ, Christianity will be fully come, but not till 
then. 

The duty enjoined upon Timothy, is a responsibility 
which devolves from one generation of believers to 
another, and with increasing obligation — That good thing, 
or that sacred deposit, which was committed unto thee 
guard through the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us. 
StiU the Holy Spirit dwells in the apostolic succession of 

73 



74 The Reality of Faith. 

the whole true Church of Christ, showing it what the 
things of Christ are, and helping it realize them in 
Christianity. 

How, then, are we to understand what the Chris- 
tianity is which we are still called to make real on 
earth? In answer to this most practical question, I 
remark, in the first place, the Christianity which the 
world needs, probably transcends any single definition of 
it which we shall be likely to give. Philosophers have 
tried many times to define the simple word life, and at 
best they have had only clumsy success with their defi- 
nitions of what every one knows by his own healthy 
pulse-beatings. The definition is not made easier when 
we prefix the adjective Christian to the word life. If 
we labor to define in words so large and divine a reality 
as Christianity, we shall be sure to narrow it in our verbal 
enclosures, and we can hardly fail to leave whole realms 
of Christianity out when we have finished our fences of 
system and denomination. 

Moreover, in all life, even the lowly life of a blade of 
grass, there is a transcendent element beyond our defini- 
tion — a mystery and power of life, which, if we knew, 
we might know what God himself is. In the Christian 
life, in Christianity as the continued and ever-unfolding 
life of Christ in the world, there is a power of the 
Holy Ghost above nature, and a divine mystery of love, 
which we may know as a historical fact of redemption, 
but which no human reason can adequately comprehend. 

I remark, in the second place, that Christianity is a 
larger thing than any one particular aspect or exemplifi- 
cation of it which men may be tempted to put in the 



Real Christianity. 75 

place of it. Christianity, as a whole, is greater than the 
parts of it which men have hastily seized upon, and con- 
tended for as the faith of the saints. This is but saying, 
in other words, that the Christianity of Jesus Christ is 
greater than the Christianity of Peter, James or Paul ; 
of Hildebrand, or Erasmus, or Luther ; of Calvin or 
Channing; Christianity is that good thing which all 
the churches hold in common, and it is greater than all. 
The Christianity of Christ is that good thing com- 
mitted unto us, which is large enough to comprehend all 
the ideals of Christian prophets, and prayers of devout 
hearts, as well as the works of faith which have been done 
on earth. It is the hope of the world. And we need 
to keep this thought of the still unrealized greatness of 
the Christianity of Christ ever in mind, lest we be found 
standing in the way of the Christian will of God in the 
course of events, when we stand with mistaken firmness, 
not for the whole of Christianity which is in part his- 
torical, and in part prophetic, but only for that form or 
present realization of Christianity which corresponds to 
our own habits or education. Find out under any given 
circumstances what is the most Christian thing to be 
done, or the most Christian thought that one can think; 
and let us stand for that until we can find something 
more Christian to do, or a thought more true to the 
Spirit of Christ ! 

It would be easy to illustrate from current life and 
literature the natural tendency of the human heart to 
substitute some favorite part of Christianity for the 
divine whole of it. And the unfortunate contentions 
and hindrances to the Gospel which follow from this 



76 The Reality of Faith, 

mistake are all around us. Thus one class of persons 
are called to benevolent works by the divine charity of 
Christ, but in their zeal for man they may not realize 
sufficiently that the charity of God is the benevolence of 
universal law, and the Christ is the life because he is 
also the truth. Others, on the contrary, impressed by 
the order and grandeur of the truths of revelation, 
repeatedly fall into merely doctrinal definitions of Chris- 
tianity ; and, even while defending from supposed error 
the faith once delivered to the saints, they narrow that 
faith into a theological conception of Christianity which 
may have indeed much of the truth, but little of the 
Spirit of Christ. This kind of partial apprehension of 
Christianity has led to the degradation in customary 
religious speech of some very noble expressions of the 
Scriptures. For example, in the Epistles the phrases 
occur, "sound doctrine," "sound in the faith," "hold 
fast the form of sound words ; " but as these Biblical 
expressions have come to be favorite rallying words on 
the lips of many good men, their original largeness and 
force have been lost. Men often mean now by them. 
Keep fast your doctrinal beliefs ; be sound in your creed. 
Paul meant vastly more by them than that. He meant 
to exhort converts, exposed to all the lusts and sins of a 
Pagan world, to be sound believers ; to be men of sound 
Christian faith ; to live according to the healthful doc- 
trine of Christ ; to consent to " the healthy words," he 
says, " even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the doctrine which is according to godliness." You will 
notice, if you read these phrases in their context, that 
they occur usually in the midst of very plain words 



Real Christianity, 77 

against some well-known sins. When the Apostle is 
speaking about liars, and men-stealers, and false swearers, 
he completes his catalogue of sins by the general phrase, 
" or any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine." 
Of men who heap to themselves teachers after their own 
lusts, he says, " They will not endure the sound doctrine." 
AVhen he is describing the character of the good bishop, 
one not self-willed, no brawler, no striker, a man not 
always upon the platform of contention, the hospitable 
lover of the good, the sober-minded, just, holy, temper- 
ate man ; it is of this good man, and his life according 
to Christ, that the Apostle says: '^ Holding to the faith- 
ful word which is according to the teaching, that he may 
be able both to exhort in the sound doctrine, and to 
convict the gainsayers." Let us beware how we dwarf 
these large Biblical expressions to the littleness of some 
small image of Christianity which we may have fash- 
ioned for ourselves, and set up for all the rest of the 
Church to bow down to and to worship. It is, indeed, 
a great thing to be what Paul meant by a man sound in 
the faith ; what a character confirmed in the truth of 
Christ, growing in knoT^ ledge of God, beaming with 
grace, full of good works, must he have who is sound 
in the faith according to the doctrine of Christ. 

I remark, in the third place, Christianity is that good 
thing which we have received from Christ. In other 
words, Christianity is not a spirit merely, or idea, or 
influence, which we still call by the name of Christ, but 
which we may receive and even enhance without further 
reference to the historic Christ. Christianity is more 
than a spirit of the times, more than a memory of a life 



78 The Reality of Faith, 

for men, more than a distillation in modern literature of 
the Sermon on the Mount, more than a fragrance of the 
purest of lives pervading history and grateful still to 
our refined moral sense. Jesus once said before the 
chief among the people, " I receive not honor from 
men ; " and the patronage of culture cannot make for 
our wants and sins a Christ from the Father. Chris- 
tianity is the direct continuation of the life and the work 
of Jesus of Nazareth in the world. It cannot be sepa- 
rated from the Christ of the Gospels. He came from 
God ; he lived on earth a heavenly life ; he conquered 
sin ; he rose from the dead ; he sent the Holy Spirit to 
take of the things of Christ, and show them unto the 
Apostles ; his Church grew up, and continues to this 
day, grounded upon the historic facts of his life and 
work of redemption ; its two simple sacraments are the 
perpetual signs of what God has done for the regenera- 
tion of the world ; its Sabbath day, the Lord's day, is 
the calm, steadfast witness, through the hurrying weeks 
of the centuries, to the effect upon the minds of eye- 
witnesses of the resurrection of the Lord of glory. 
Christianity is not like the best essence of other religions, 
an ideal merely, a fragrance from a broken vase ; it is a 
present fact ; it is the vital fact of history ; it is an ulti- 
mate fact of experience to be explained only by itself. 
It cannot be analyzed into other facts and understood as 
a combination, or passing mode, of other forces. Chris- 
tianity is a fact of redemption, like nature, according to 
law, yet divinely original as the creation. God only is 
before the established order both of nature and grace. 
Christianity, past, present, future, beginning with what 



Real Christia7iity. 79 

Jesus began to do, continuing with what men may be 
and do in his name, and looking forward to the king- 
dom of God which is to be its full and final realization — 
Cliristianity, I say, is the one absolute fact of human 
history, central, supreme, and indissoluble into other 
facts or forces. 

Hence, it would be a vain expectation to imagine that 
the world can long retain the influence of Christ, the 
healing aroma of Christianity, and let the Jesus of the 
Gospels fade into a myth. Christianity, uprooted from 
its source in divine facts of redemption, would be but as a 
cut flower, still pervading for a while our life with its 
charity, but another day even its perfume would have 
vanished. The Christianity of Christ is a living love. 

In the fourth place, Christianity is a changed relation- 
ship of human souls to God through Christ. Go back 
to the beginning of Christianity to find out what it is. 
It began to exist on earth first upon the afternoon of a 
certain day when the last of the Hebrew prophets, look- 
ing upon Jesus as he walked, said, " Behold the Lamb 
of God." And two of his disciples heard him speak, 
and they followed Jesus. That was the beginning of 
Christianity on earth — not, indeed, what John the Bap- 
tist said, but what those men did, when they at once put 
John's truth into action, and followed Jesus. Those two 
disciples, going from John, and following Christ, signify 
the beginning of Christianity. Recall what that act 
was to them. They were not bad men suddenly reform- 
ing. They had not been godless men. They were good 
Hebrews. Nathanael, Avho made the fifth Christian, was 
a man without guile. These men had been trying to 



8o The Reality of Faith, 

live aright towards their God. But when they joined 
themselves to Christ, they began to live in a very differ- 
ent relation towards their God. They were soon taught 
to pray to him as " Our Father who art in heaven.'' 
They found erelong that the Son of man whom they 
followed had power on earth to forgive sins. They 
would not have hereafter to bring sacrifices to the temple 
at Jerusalem. One solemn evening the Master gathered 
them and a few others, twelve in all, who had attached 
themselves to him, in an upper chamber, and brake 
bread, and filled the cup, and in words which then they 
could hardly realize, but with an authority which they 
durst not question, let them know — afterwards they 
understood it — that he himself was God's own offering 
for sin ; that for his sake God would come very near to 
them, forgiving all, and taking them freely into the 
communion of His own Holy Spirit who should descend 
upon them at Pentecost with visible signs of the new 
Christian era. These men are now like new men in 
another world ; in Christ's presence all divine things 
seem possible to them ; they are changed from the centre 
and core of their being ; they are verily born again, for 
they live henceforth lives as different from their former 
lives before they came to Christ as though they had 
actually died out of this world, and come back to it 
again with the memory in their hearts of a better world. 
After a few years in Jesus' companionship, after all that 
they had witnessed of his death and resurrection, they 
are themselves as men belonging to another world, 
citizens of a better country, sojourning for a brief 
season here. " Old things are passed away," says the 



Real Christianity, 8i 

last-born of the Apostles ; " Behold, all things are 
become new." This, then, is Christianity — Peter, and 
John, and other men, living with Christ in a new rela- 
tionship to God. It is a happy, hopeful, all-transfigur- 
ing relationship of human souls to God. Christ giving 
his Spirit to the disciples, disciples witnessing of the 
Christ — this, this is Christianity. This is the new life 
in the changed world which we call Christianity. This 
is that good thing committed unto us which we are to 
guard, as his Holy Spirit dwells in us. 

What, then, is Christianity? It is, we say, the doctrine 
of Christ. What is the doctrine of Christ? Men 
sound in the faith; men made whole, men living 
according to Christ. The doctrine of Christ is not a 
word, or a system of words. It is not a book, or a 
collection of writings. Purposely Jesus wrote only 
upon the sand. He left not one word written on parch- 
ment for men afterwards to worship. He left with us 
no temptation to idolatry of the letter. He wrote his 
doctrine in the book of human life. He made men his 
Scriptures. His doctrine was the teaching of the living 
Spirit. The doctrine of Christ — lo ! Peter, the tempestu- 
ous man, strong one moment and weak another, become 
now a man of steady hope, confessor, and martyr — he 
is the doctrine of Christ ! The son of thunder become 
the apostle of love — he is the doctrine of Christ! The 
persecutor become one who dies daily for the salvation 
of the Gentiles — he is the doctrine of Christ ! Jesus left 
these men, and other disciples like them, to do the nec- 
essary writing that other ages might know for certainty 
of his life, and receive the truths which are the expres- 

6 



82 The Reality of Faith. 

sions of his personal Gospel to man from God the 
Father. The Spirit was bestowed upon them sufficiently 
to enable them to give us these Christian Scriptures as 
our supreme authorities for the words and teachings of 
Jesus; but the Bible is not Christianity. Jesus left 
inspired men to make the Bible ; he himself made 
Christianity; and the Christianity which Christ made 
and is ever making, shall endure ; it shall be the king- 
dom of Christ given up to God the Father after this 
world shall be among the things of the past ; and then, 
in the presence of the Lord, seeing the glory that excell- 
eth, we shall have no further need of the partial reve- 
lations of prophets and apostles, of the Bible we used on 
earth. 

What is Christianity ? I have been seeking for a real 
definition. I have said. It is the disciple with the 
Master, or the disciple with God, as never before, 
through the Christ. But this is not all. The divine 
reality is always beyond the human speech that would 
overtake it. 

Once more, fifthly, Christianity is the company of 
disciples in new relationship with one another, and 
towards all men, through Christ. 

Christianity originated on earth with two disciples, 
not one. And the two disciples, we read, heard him 
speak, and they followed Jesus. Then one of these two 
findeth his own brother Simon and tells him of the 
Messiah. The next day Jesus findeth another ready to 
follow him, and he goes at once and findeth Nathanael. 
Thus Christianity, the day after it began to exist, con- 
sisted of five persons following Christ^ — his men bound 



Real Christianity. 83 

in an altogether new relationship to each other by their 
newly-found relationship to the Messiah ! So the new 
society was constituted in the first act of faith in Christ. 
Christianity in its beginning was a human companion- 
ship in a divine friendship. Having thus begun as a 
society, Christianity at once grew and spread according 
to its original genius of fellowship. Less than four years 
after the two found the Messiah, we read of some three 
thousand souls who continued in the teaching and fellow- 
ship of the apostles, and all that believed were together. 
It is not enough, therefore, when we say that Christians 
and churches have social needs and duties. Society is 
of the very essence of Christianity. The new redeemed 
society is Christianity. A man cannot be a Christian, 
at least not a whole Christian, by himself alone. To 
seek to live a Christian life by one's self, in the secrecy of 
one's own heart, is an endeavor foreign to the original 
genius of Christianity. Christianity, when it is finished, 
will be the best society gathered from all the ages, the 
perfect society of the kingdom of heaven. How can a 
man expect to fit himself for that blessed society by 
neglecting here and now to enter into the fellowship of 
believers who seek to prepare themselves for that final 
society of the Lord by meeting and breaking bread 
together at his table ? 

Remember, Christianity is first two disciples following 
Jesus ; then twelve confessing the Christ ; then seventy 
going forth in his name; then some three thousand 
receiving his Spirit and being all together ; and now a 
goodly company gathering in Christ's name from every 
land; and at last, at last, the city of God, and the 



84 The Reality of Faith. 

nations of them which are saved walking in the light 
of it, and the voice of a great multitude, as the voice 
of many waters, saying, "AUeluiah : for the Lord God 
omnipotent reigneth ! ^^ 

To be a Christian, therefore, is to be actually a follower 
of Christ with his disciples. I say actually, because men 
may follow Christ only with their thoughts, or their 
wishes, or their feelings, ideally, sentimentally, litur- 
gically ; but those first two disciples really followed him, 
and they left everything else in order to continue follow- 
ing the Messiah whom they had found. And so may 
we be actual followers, though he leads us now along 
his way of life not by wonder of visible appearance before 
us, but quietly by his Spirit. This is only saying, in other 
words, that it is not so difficult, it certainly is not impos- 
sible for us, in the real purposes of our own hearts and 
in the common daily circumstances of our lives to decide 
what is Christian — what is the most Christlike thought 
to think, the most Christlike feeling to cherish, the true. 
Christlike thing to be done. But to be Christian in this 
real way will require sincere repentance from sin, an 
actual, not sentimental, struggle against selfishness, and 
a thorough-going committal of ourselves in everything 
to the will of God in Christ for us. And to make real and 
not merely nominal work of it we shall need often with 
deliberate resolution to give ourselves up to our own 
faiths, to throw ourselves manftilly upon their current, 
and to let them catch us up and bear us whither they 
will. Believers too often stand doubting and hesitating 
upon the edge of their own faith, not ready to trust them- 
selves to its stream. The world behind them is a hope- 



Real Christianity. 85 

less tangle ; there is no way out there ; plunge back into 
it, and they will have to return, panting and torn by the 
thicket ; — the only way out from the pathless perplexities 
of nature is to follow the course of that pure faith which 
flows through nature like the river of life. Take to the 
stream; keep well in its current; beyond the rapids, 
beyond the wild wood and the gloom of the shadows, are 
the broad lake, the habitable fields, and the sunset. 
What we need as professing Christians is not to waste 
so much time standing still, shivering upon the borders 
of the faith whose promise runs before us ; we need to 
commit ourselves wholly to our own Christian beliefs ; 
to launch our lives upon them ; to work, and to enjoy 
to-day, as though there is a God who is thoughtful of us 
as we are of our children ; to fight triumphantly the evil 
nature of man in the assurance that sin is forgiven, and 
there is a crown of life waiting for him that overcometh ; 
to meet the anxiety of to-day with the larger trust for 
eternity; and, taking our immortality for granted, to 
plan every day for it, laying up in our own enlarging 
hearts, and in our friends, the treasures of heaven. 

One word of application more. The fact that Chris- 
tianity is essentially society, the one true society of earth 
and heaven, is a fact full of present duty for us. As the 
Christian cannot be a whole Christian by himself alone, 
so no church can be the true Church by itself alone. 
Christianity is that good thing which is in all the 
churches. It is " that large thing in the midst of all the 
churches '' to which many hopeful eyes are now turning. 
Our particular tenets and methods of administration are 
not of the essence of Christianity. The peculiarity of no 



86 The Reality of Faith. 

church in Christendom belongs to the eternal substance 
of Christianity. These things of government, worship, 
and denominational confession, are the temporary forms, 
or accidents, of the Christianity of Christ. And what 
the world needs now is less of our forms of Christianity, 
and more of the real Christianity of Jesus Christ. The 
missionary energy which seeks to gather from all nations 
the new society belongs to the Christianity of Christ. 
His also is the Christianity which in a city seeks to save 
men from sin and suffering, and to bring all classes of 
people together in a new society in the one sufficient Name. 
That is not the Christianity of Christ which is content 
with filling its own pew, and letting the rest of the world 
find its Messiah if it can. That good thing committed 
unto us guard. There were two ways during the 
war of guarding the national capitol. One was by 
keeping a large body of troops in the fortifications around 
Washington at the peril of the army in the field. The 
other way was by supplying first the army in the field, 
sending them forth where the enemy were, and caring 
secondly for the home fortifications. The latter way 
saved Washington, while it took Richmond. This also 
is the best way now for us to guard the Christianity of 
our churches. They best defend the faith once delivered 
to the saints who do the most brave and aggressive work 
against the actual sins and real denials of the world. 
And if, in any critical period of faith, it may be neces- 
sary for us, along some lines of doctrinal attack or 
defense, to achieve that most difficult of military 
manoeuvres, to change front under fire ; if those who 
observe coolly where the strength of unbelief lies, and 



Real Christianity, 87 

from what direction the real peril of faith comes, do 
comisel some change of doctrinal front to protect exposed 
positions ; let the churches follow, hopefully and bravely, 
without firing into our own ranks, in order that we may 
still guard, as good soldiers, that which is committed to 
our trust. 



VII. 

THE CHRIST-LIKENESS OF GOD. 

" Jor to tf)t5 triij tot laior anlj stxiht, iwaust tot \)nhi our )^op« 
5tt oit t'ijt lihm% (Gcoir, toi^o is l^e ^aiiour of all mm, spwialls o£ li&tm 
t^at iilitbt." — I Tim. iv. lo. 

There is latent in this Scripture a double energy of 
truth which the providence of God is now calling forth 
for the more thorough Christianization of Christianity. 
An historic power of Hebrew faith is in this Biblical 
expression, "The living God;'' and there is further 
Christian energy of truth in these words, " Who is the 
Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.'' 
God is living, now, here, on earth, everywhere; and 
God is our Saviour. Christ is usually called Saviour ; 
but this name of Christ the apostle here transfers 
directly to God. In several texts God is called our 
Saviour. God, then, is to us what Christ is. God 
himself, then, is essentially Christlike. He must have 
in Himself some Christ-likeness, for He is, as Christ, our 
Saviour. Let the energy of these two truths once enter 
into a man's heart — ^the truth that in everything we 
have to do with the living God, and the truth that our 
God is the Christlike One, and they are enough to 
revolutionize a man's life. These two truths of God's 
living Presence and Christ-likeness have always been 
hidden in the practical theology of the Church. They 
88 



The Christ-likeness of God. 89 

have not always come to their proper recognition in the 
speculative thought or reasoned theology of the Church ; 
but they belong to the substance of the faith once 
delivered to the saints ; and even amid doctrinal errors, 
or unworthy thoughts of God, they have survived in 
the trusting heart of God's people. 

These truths, that God is the living Presence, and 
that God is Christian in all the depths and glories of 
his being, are truths now seizing upon our religious 
thought, and pervading our best religious literature with 
new power of the Spirit. The revival of theology, 
which is growing in grace and knowledge of God in 
this country, is energized by these convictions that God 
is here and now, the living God ; and, I say it reverently, 
that the Almighty Lord and Ruler of this universe is a 
Christian Being. In all our reasoning and speech about 
divinity and human destiny, we need to recognize simply 
and fully this essential fact of revelation that our God 
— the living God — is of all beings the most profoundly 
and really Christian. At all times, and in all relations, 
we are to conceive of God both as the living Presence, 
and as the Christlike One. 

Let me seek in this sermon to bring our minds into 
some contact with the energy of these truths, latent in 
this and many another text, so that we may find our 
thoughts lighted up by this Scripture, and may go hence 
to stronger lives. 

First : Our hope is set on the living God. This is a 
familiar Biblical phrase. But it was not a phrase merely 
to those men whom Moses urged to right living, as he 
said : " For who is there of all flesh that hath heard the 



QO The Reality of Faith, 

voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the 
fire, as we have, and lived ? ^' This word, the living 
God, had not become an echo of a vanishing faith to the 
Psalmist, longing for the communion of the temple, who 
uttered Israel's national consciousness in this prayer: 
" My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of 
the Lord : my heart and my flesh crieth out for the 
living God." It was a word intense with faith, when 
Simon Peter looked up into the eye of Jesus Christ who 
stood before him, flashing his divinity like a glory into 
his soul, and asking, " But whom say ye that I am ? " 
and Simon Peter answered, and said, " Thou art the 
Christ, the Son of the living God." It was not a mere 
refrain of exalted religious sentiment, but a part of the 
liturgy of glad lives, when Apostles, and those first 
Christians, swelled the chorus of faith in the midst of 
persecutions with these triumphant words : " We trust 
in the living God ; — God our Saviour, and Christ Jesus 
our hope ; — ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the 
city of the living God." 

At different periods in the history of the Church, the 
Spirit whom Christ promised should lead his disciples 
into all truth seems to have fixed the mind of the 
Church upon some particular truth which was needed at 
that special time for man's growth in the knowledge of 
God. Thus, in the first centuries, the mind of the early 
Church was riveted upon the nature of the wondrous 
person of Christ ; and the Nicene creed was the result 
of three centuries of thought about Christ. In the Ref- 
ormation the truths of free grace and the sole sovereignty 
of God became the strengthening bread of life for 



The Christ-likeness of God. 91 

believers. God leads his people at diiferent times to dif- 
ferent phases and powers of the truth according to their 
present need. And is not his Spirit still leading us, if 
we will put away our own opinions, and seek to learn 
those things of Christ which for our own peril of faith 
we need to have shown to us ? Certainly it is noticeable 
at" the present time how many minds in different parts 
of the Christian world are being led to deeper convic- 
tions of the personal nearness of the Father, and, at the 
same time, into a reviving faith in the pure Clirist-lil^e- 
ness of the Almighty God. I will not pause now even 
to glance down those inviting ways of thought along 
which many minds are being led straight through this 
material system of things out into behef in the spiritual 
omnipresence of God. The philosopher of largest intel- 
lect which Germany has produced for many years — a 
man trained both as a physician and a metaphysician, 
who has not long since gone hence into the unseen — 
Hermann Lotze — ^became so firmly impressed with 
the omnipresence of Spirit in the creation, that he 
thought it impossible to conceive of the mechanical rela- 
tions of things, of the communication even of motion 
between two wheels, without the hypothesis of a spir- 
itual element behind all physical things, and in which 
all things consist. 

A professor of chemistry, with whom sometime since 
I was talking about nature, and what it really is, said to 
me, thoughtfully : " The order of nature is God^s per- 
sonal conduct of his universe.'' It is not with a dead 
nature, or an impersonal order of laws, but with the 
living God in his personal and most Christian conduct 



92 The Reality of Faith, 

of the universe, that we living souls have to do here 
and hereafter. But I wish at this time to dwell more 
fully upon the other truth of our text. 

Secondly : Our hope is set on the living God our 
Saviour. I have heard in the class-room of a theolog- 
ical seminary much brilliant analysis of divinity ; that 
God is, or, at least, was in the beginning, the great First 
Cause ; that he is in all probability of reason the Pre- 
server, Lawgiver and Judge ; that he is the Trinity ; 
that he has various attributes and perfections which he 
must jealously guard, and a law whose honor he must 
maintain in justifying sinners. I believe that these 
propositions about God are, for the most part, well-rea- 
soned and true ideas of divinity, so far as they go. But 
unless from his Bible and through his life a man has 
learned to know something of God himself — his per- 
sonal nearness, and his Christ-likeness — how is he fit to 
go forth and preach the Gospel ? How can a man 
preach Jesus' Gospel, which the people heard gladly, 
unless, in some way, he has realized in his own heart 
what perfect and blessed Christ-likeness God is ? Unless 
he can look up into the silent sky, or down into the 
lowest depths of human suffering and sin, or away to 
the ends of the world, and say, with a faith into which 
his own heart has grown, and in which his reason has 
learned to wait expectant : " My hope is set on the living 
God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of them 
that believe ? " 

It is a principle of far-reaching sweep and recon- 
structive power in theology, to think of our God above 
all as most Christlike in his inmost being and nature. 



The Christ-likeness of God. 93 

God is in Christ ; God is showing himself to the world 
in Christ; God is himself an infinite and adorable 
Christ-likeness. What is tliis but the finished and com- 
plete Biblical doctrine of God? We are to take this 
truth, therefore, boldly from the finished Bible ; and in 
the pure light of it we should read every chapter and 
verse in the Bible, and judge the Bible by it ; we should 
judge the Bible, that is, by its own final and perfect 
truth of God manifest in the flesh. Many of the ideas 
and traditions of men which prove burdensome to 
Christian conscience have arisen from failure to read 
and to interpret particular Scriptures in the light of 
Christ's final and perfect disclosure of what God himself 
is. Men have said hard things, words hard to be 
believed, concerning God and his decrees, because in 
their eager reasonings they have forgotten the truth 
which all the while they beheved in their hearts, that 
the Almighty Sovereign of this universe is really a 
Christian God. One illustration only of many let me 
recall. 

I once saw in the city of Niirnberg, I think it 
was, a religious picture, in which God the Father was 
represented in heaven as shooting down arrows upon 
the ungodly, and midway between heaven and earth 
Christ, the Mediator, was depicted as reaching forth and 
catching those arrows, and breaking them as they fell. 
The painting was true to methods of conceiving Christ's 
work of atonement into which faith had fallen from the 
simplicity of the Bible ; but it should not be called a 
Christian picture. " God, our Saviour,'' said Apostles 
who had seen God revealed in Christ ; and Jesus him- 



94 The Reality of Faith. 

self once said : " He that hath seen me, hath seen the 
Father.^' But I do not wish to linger with the painful 
and profitless task of showing how easily believers may 
fall far below Christ's revelation of the Godhead. 
Rather I want to urge you to a constant and bold habit 
of thinking of your God as he has disclosed his moral 
nature to the world as most thoroughly and adorably 
Christian. 

It is one thing — and an important thing — to obtain 
from the Scriptures some adequate doctrine of the 
divinity of Christ. But it is another thing — and prac- 
tically for us a more important thing — ^to have God 
through Christ brought as a living and inspiring Presence 
into direct contact with all our plans and work and 
happiness in life. One may confess with his lips the 
equal divinity of the Son, and yet not have the Father 
through the Son in the real inspirations of his life ; and, 
on the other hand, there are those who have touched, as 
we think, but the hem of the true doctrine of the person 
of Christ, yet with a touch of faith which has brought 
to their lives a healing virtue. That poor woman who 
went away from Christ healed, made well and sound for 
her household duties by her touch of faith upon the 
hem of Jesus' garment, was a truer Christian than a 
Nicodemus who knew the law, and heard Jesus' pro- 
foundest truth of the Spirit, and went away to think 
about it. 

In sincere acceptance of Jesus' word that he knew the 
Father, and came from God, let us read the Gospels for 
the purpose of learning what God himself is towards us 
in our daily lives ; how our world appears in the pure 



The Christ-likeness of God. 95 

eye of God ; how he thinks of us, and is interested in 
what we may be doing, suffering, or achieving. To him 
who came forth from God to show the heart of deity 
towards this world of ours, let us, too, hasten with the 
multitude who gather from all paths around Jesus upon 
that mountain-side. We, too, have been trying to make 
ourselves at ease and happy in this world, and we, like 
these other men whose faces are marked with anxieties 
and cares, have not found life the satisfaction which we 
want it to be. Jesus opens his mouth and speaks ; and, 
with the great multitude of earth's unsatisfied children, we 
listen : Blessed are the poor in spirit ; blessed are they 
tliat mourn ; blessed are the meek ; blessed are the merci- 
ful ; blessed are the pure in heart ; blessed are the peace- 
makers ; blessed are they that have been persecuted ; — 
and through his speech of blessing run these words 
of promise — strange, some of them, like music in an 
unknown tongue to us, yet all so real to him — the 
melody of his own wondrous life — and waking, too, in 
our hearts feelings that seem like reminiscences of some- 
thing beautiful, once known and lost — ^these sweet, pure 
words of promise : For theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven ; for they shall be comforted ; for they shall 
inherit the earth ; for they shall obtain mercy ; for they 
shall see God ; for they shall be called sons of God ; for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven ; rejoice and be exceed- 
ing glad, for great is your reward in heaven. And he 
who opens his mouth, and teaches the multitude, utters 
God's heart to us upon that mountain-side. This is God's 
own blessedness showing itself to the world. Such is 
God, blessing with his own blessedness the virtue which is 



96 The Reality of Faith, 

like his own goodness. Yes, but as Jesus, in his speech 
and person, realizes God before us, how can we help 
becoming conscious of our distance of soul from perfec- 
tion so divine? Before him our hearts confess their 
sinfulness ; he is the blessed One and we are sinners, lost 
how far from his pure peace ! Listen again to this 
Wonder of Being from above who has said — and no 
man can convince him of sin and gainsay his witness to 
himself — "I and my Father are one/^ We stand in 
that house where he says to a palsied man who trusted 
him, " Son, thy sins be forgiven thee ; " and when, in 
our surprise we ask, under our breath, " Who can for- 
give sins but God only?^' our questioning does not 
escape his ear who hears even the thoughts of our 
hearts. " But that ye may know that the Son of man 
hath power on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the 
sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed and go unto 
thy house." He speaks for God. So God is tow^ards 
man ; this word is from the bosom of the Father ; there 
is on earth divine forgiveness of sin. But the fear of 
death is here in this world of sepulchres. We never 
know when our homes shall be broken into by that dread 
power before which all our caution and all our art, time 
and again, sink helpless. We might love to love were it 
not for death. The worst thing about our life here is, 
that the more we fit our hearts for the highest happiness 
of friendships, the more we fit ourselves, also, for sorrow ; 
love is itself the short prelude so often to a long mourn- 
ing. What does God think of this? What can God 
in heaven think of us in our bitter mortality ? Follow 
again this Jesus who says he knows — and surely none 



The Christ-likeness of God. 97 

of us has virtue enough to doubt him — what will he 
show God's heart to be towards human suifering and 
death ? Lord, show us in this respect the Father, and 
it sufficeth us. Numbered with the great multitude 
who have lost friends and know sorrow, let us also go 
with this Christ from God, and see what God will do 
with sorrow and death. There, coming slowly out of 
the gate of the city, is a procession of much people. 
We do not need to be told their errand ; often we have 
followed with those who go to the grave. The Christ 
who says he knows what God our Father is and thinks, 
meets them who are carrying to his burial the only son 
of a widow. It is all there, the whole story of man 
and woman's grief. The husband compelled, perhaps 
years ago, to leave the woman whom he had sworn with 
his soul's truth to love and keep ; and she left perhaps 
with a mere child clinging to her skirts to find what life 
she could from a world too eager about its own hard 
business to stop to shelter her ; and now that the boy 
has groAvn, and come in some measure to take the place 
of the father's strength, after all these years of care and 
toil, he, too, is dead. Of what worth is life? Yet 
still death is cruel ; he snatches youth from life's fair 
promise, and leaves the widoAV, with worn-out heart, to 
years of emptiness. The Christ sees it all ; and more 
than all which disciples see ; — he looks on through the 
years, and beholds death's broad harvests, and the gene- 
rations of men passing each from earth in pain and 
tears ; the whole history of death through the ages he 
bears upon the knowledge of his heart.* What, then, 

* I would acknowledge an indistinct recollection of a similar use 

7 



98 The Reality of Faith, 

does God on high think and mean as he sees the mourn- 
ers going forth from the gates of every city, and all life 
here ending, like this young man's, in silence and dark- 
ness ? What will God do with death ? "And when the 
Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto 
her, Weep not. And he came nigh and touched the 
bier : and the bearers stood still. And he said. Young 
man, I say unto thee. Arise. And he that was dead 
sat up, and began to speak.'' We might not be able 
to credit the miracle, if, indeed, death be the last law 
of life; if the miracle were an exception to God's 
universal plan and purpose for all the dead; but it 
is not. That single resurrection is not an exception, 
but only an anticipation of the higher law of life over 
death. It was not a miracle, but only an illustration 
beforehand of the larger law of life. While the widow 
wept, while the sisters of his friend Lazarus could 
not be comforted, Jesus knew that life is the rule in 
God's great universe, and death the exception. The 
final law is that death shall be swallowed up in life, and 
no victory of death be left at last in any earthly grave. 
That resurrection of the widow's son is not, then, a 
miracle, but a prophecy to him who works it. It is not 
a miracle, but only an anticipation of the fulfillment of 
his will from eternity to the living God. Christ bidding 
that woman, weep not ; Christ showing by anticipation 
the power of the eternal life is the representation upon 
this earth, over its open graves, of what God is in 
heaven, and means to do at last with death. So God is 

of this narrative of the Gospel in a sermon which I heard many 
years ago from Newman Hall, but which I cannot find in print. 



The Christ-likeness of God. 99 

towards us and our human hearts. Love on ! love 
well ! toil on, and be not weary ! I am the resurrection 
and the life. The last enemy shall be destroyed ; I am 
the living God. 

Yes, this is a glad Gospel from the bosom of the 
Eternal ; but there is so much in this world beside death 
which we never would know an}i;hing more of in any 
other world. This earth is full of human cruelty 
and oppressions. Man's passion would lie in wait to 
ruin the very angels if it could. We cannot walk on 
the streets of any city in the world without seeing signs 
of suffering and the wretched w^ork of sin. And we can 
trust the world around us only a little way. AYe have 
formed from long familiarity with life an instinct which 
keeps us always on the watch against the lie. We want 
to leave our own self-deceptions all behind us, and to 
lose the instinct of suspicion in another world. Let us 
go, then, once more ^\^th this Jesus into the cit}^, and see 
what he will do with the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. 
In the world from which he says he came, and into 
which he declares he is going soon — for a little while to 
be unseen by his o>vn friends — in that w^orld will he 
suffer these men to be ? " Woe unto you, scribes and 
Pharisees, hypocrites ; — How shall ye escape the judgment 
of Gehenna ?'' It is the same Christ who is speaking, — 
he whom we heard saying, Blessed, and in words which 
seemed to be a song from the heart of his own Kfe, — he 
who went weeping with the sisters at Bethany, — who 
once sent that procession of mourners back in triumph 
and joy to the city. It is he who now stands before 
those extortioners and h\^ocrites, and says in God's 



lOO The Reality of Faith. 

name : " Woe unto you ! '' It is enough. The face of 
God is set against them that do evil. No lie shall enter 
the gates of that city of the many homes. Jesus shows 
God the Father to the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. 
His love, so pure, so luminous with all joy, so deep in 
its eternal peacefulness, God the Father's love, is and 
shall be forever the Gehenna of all lies, the consuming 
fire of sin. 

Yes ; — ^but again our human thoughts turn this bright 
hope into anxiety. These men may not have known. 
AYe would go into the city and save all. We would let 
none go until we had done all that love could do ; we 
would not suffer any man to be lost if love could ever find 
him ? How, then, does Jesus show us God is towards 
these lost ones ? Listen ; he sees a shepherd going forth 
in the storm over the bleak mountain-side, seeking for the 
one lost sheep ; and this Wonder of divinity with man — 
he who came from God and knows — says. Such is God ; 
" Even so it is not the will of your Father in heaven, that 
one of these little ones should perish.^' This is the pic- 
ture of the heart of God drawn by Christ's own hand — the 
shepherd seeking the one lost sheep. And there is a 
Scripture of an inspired Apostle which might be written 
beneath that picture which Jesus drew of God's dis- 
position towards all who are lost ; — " This is good and 
acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who willeth 
that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge 
of the truth." Upon this word from God may not our 
questioning fold at length its wiugs and rest ? Such is 
God's disposition towards all men ; if any man hath not 
forgiveness either in this world, or the world to come, it 



The Christ-likeness of God, loi 

is his own choice ; it is his own sin, and that not against 
conscience only, but against all that God could reveal to 
him of his spirit and will of love — the sin not against 
the law of nature merely, but the sin against the Holy 
Ghost. Observing in our creeds the reserve, as well as 
the moral positiveness of revelation, and giving now 
earnest heed to these warnings and these woes of Christ- 
like love, we can suffer many questions to remain 
unanswered in this world, because we believe in the 
eternal Christ-will of God, and are sure, although we 
cannot in all cases see how, that God will in the end, 
before the judgment day, have shown himself to all souls 
to be the most Christian God. 

Two consequences of these truths remain to be 
urged. God himself is to be seen through Christ, 
and Christ is to be studied through all that is best 
and worthiest in the disciples' lives. Therefore through 
human hearts also which reflect in any wise Christ's 
spirit, we may seek to realize what God is. God 
is what they would be, only infinitely better; his 
perfection is like man's, only infinitely transcending 
it. Let us be very bold in this living way of access 
to God. Truly has it been said that the command, 
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect, may reverently be turned the other way ; 
and any human approach towards perfection be made the 
image of what God is. The golden rule which Christ 
gives to us as the measure of all our morality, is a rule 
which he took from his knowledge of God's own personal 
conduct of his universe. To the least of his creatures 
God will do what he would have done unto him, if the 



I02 The Reality of Faith, 

creature were God. And so a living Christian preacher 
has taken that rare chapter in the epistle to the Corinthi- 
ans upon charity, and made that conversely the Christian 
mirror of God. Surely our love is but reflection of his 
light in which no darkness is. Through that chapter of 
love not only look out upon your neighbor, but also up 
towards God. Where will you find a clearer telescope 
to bring the heavens of his glory near ? Interpret what 
God is — what his law and commandments are — through 
these inspired words ; — " If I speak with the tongues 
of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become 
sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. If I have not 
love, I am nothing.^^ Read that of God himself. For 
surely He would not have us be what he is not. Yet 
look not through the words merely up to God. Make 
these words, make Christ's life, most real to you, by 
finding out the best and truest things in human homes, 
in the best men, in the most Christlike friends you have 
ever known ; understand better your own most unselfish 
impulses, or deepest needs, or noblest desires, and then 
with these — all imperfect colors though they be, yet 
with these — dare to imagine for yourself the Jesus who 
walked in beauty, in the midst of our sin, pure and unde- 
filed, showing in everything God's thought and heart. 
Be very bold in this truest, human thought of the living 
God. For what has God come down to us in the form 
of man, even of a servant, if he would not have us 
come up thus to him and know him as he has revealed 
himself in Christ, and all Christlike things ? Such is 
the God whom we are to have in all our thoughts ; — not 
God far off; not God an unknown Cause before all 



The Christ-likeness of God. 103 

things ; not God hidden from us in the unutterable 
glory of his own deity ; but God in Christ reconciling 
the world unto himself ; God near to every one of us as 
Jesus was to that disciple who leaned upon his bosom ; 
God in Christ, God most Christlike then, the Christian 
God. 

And just this word more, for my sermon would lack 
the one thing necessary to secure it all without this 
further word. God is in Christ. God, I have been 
saying, is Christian, essentially and eternally Christian. 
Therefore if you would know God, you must live 
according to Christ. Every sin is so much ignorance of 
God. Through goodness only can He who is the Good 
be known. To know God our Saviour we must become 
Christlike. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, 
he is none of his. 



VIII. 

KNOWLEDGE OF SELF THROUGH CHRIST. 

"Enir th iLov^ turntir, aitir looktts upon ^zttt. Enlr ^tUt 
ttmtmbnth," — Luke xxii. 6i. 

It was in a flash of divinity upon him that Peter dis- 
covered his own loss of manliness. The Lord turned 
and looked upon Peter. The divine man looking with 
the clear eye of truth upon him revealed Peter to him- 
self. One look of the Lord of glory was enough to 
convince him of sin. He remembered, and went out 
and wept bitterly. Once before a flash of divinity upon 
him had convinced Peter of sin. At a word from 
Jesus of Nazareth we read he had let down his net after 
a night^s fruitless toil, and, to his amazement, "they 
enclosed a great multitude of fishes.'' The result 
impressed Peter with an overpowering sense of some- 
thing unlike all other men in the Son of man who had 
just been teaching the multitudes from the boat. Peter 
believed himself to be in the presence of some wonder- 
ftil revelation of God. And as soon as he became 
aware of himself as a man in the visible presence of a 
divine power, what was his first instinctive, irrepressible 
thought? When he saw it, he fell down at Jesus' 
knees, saying, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
O Lord." He was as good a man as we are. He was 
no worse than his partners in the other boat. He had 
104 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 105 

no vices that we know of. No special history of sin 
was traced upon his countenance. We know that he was 
an outspoken, warm-hearted man. He had an honest 
face. Children probably would not have been afraid of 
that strong, eager, kindly man in his fisher's clothes. 
Any one needing help might have singled out Peter in 
that crowd of Jews as the one to whom to make his 
appeal. Jesus knew what manly stuff was in Peter, 
when he called him to be one of his apostles. Indeed, 
as Peter was more of a man than most of his fellow- 
townsmen, so he would have passed for a thoroughly 
respectable and good man and citizen in any community. 
Yet when he saw himself in a flash of divinity upon 
him, he could only say : " I am a sinful man.'' I sup- 
pose that at the time when he denied Jesus he had really 
become a better man than he had been before he knew 
and followed Jesus. He must have become, under 
Jesus' influence, a larger, manlier, more prophetic soul 
than he had been before as a fisherman of Galilee. 
Nevertheless, he did an unmanly thing, and he was 
about to persist in it, when the divine Man looked him 
full in the face ; — and in that look he saw himself again. 
He remembered. He realized under the eye of Jesus 
what he had been doing. A glance of God into his soul 
revealed his loss of himself. Beholding his Lord, as 
he stood in the calm triumph of his divine manhood 
looking into his timid soul, he could not help knowing 
himself in his weakness and shame. Not a word was 
spoken. God does not need to speak to judge us. He 
will only need to look upon us. One look of divinity 
is enough to convince of sin. Peter the denier, under 



io6 The Reality of Faith, 

the eye of the Son of God, became at once Peter the 
penitent. K\A we know how afterwards Peter the peni- 
tent became Peter the man — firm as the rock — the true 
Peter, hero of faith, and made worthy at last of meeting 
and returning with joy the look of the risen and 
ascended Lord among the sons of God on high. 

These effects of Jesus' flashings of God upon Peter 
show very simply and plainly Jesus' method of convinc- 
ing men of sin, and of lifting them up through repent- 
ance to real and everlasting manliness. They indicate, 
therefore, a kind of work which needs very much to be 
done now in the Church, and in the world, in the name 
of Jesus of Nazareth. We need all of us to see our- 
selves in God's eye. We need to stand revealed to our- 
selves before the living God. We need to learn what 
we are, and ought to be, in some flashings of divinity 
upon our souls. And we need to take ourselves into the 
divinest presence we can possibly find anywhere upon 
this earth, and to study and really know ourselves in 
that presence, because there is so much that is fictitious, 
artificial, and unreal, in our traditional speech about sin 
and conviction of sin. 

The fact of life here in point is that when a preacher 
stands before a modern congregation of well-dressed and 
well-to-do people, old and young, and tells them that 
they are sinners, that they are lost sinners, and that they 
ought to repent, and to cry out what must we do to be 
saved ? — the words have a sound so familiar and so far- 
away too from their daily thoughts that it is perfectly 
easy for the majority of them to listen, and to think at 
the same time of something else. Nay, it is easy for 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 107 

the preacher himself to speak such words in the same 
far-off way, in the same unconsciousness of reality in 
the words which he speaks concerning sin and the judg- 
ment to come. We can even set heart-breaking confes- 
sions of sin to music, and sing in our churches to 
operatic airs words which, if they have any reality about 
them, would pierce the air rather like the cry of a lost 
soul. Peter did not go away from the Lord's eye singing ; 

Shall the vile race of flesh and blood, 
Contend with their Creator God ? 

He went out in silence and wept bitterly. When a 
miracle of divinity made the living God the one consum- 
ing Reality of things to him, he did not sing ; 

Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin, 
And born unholy and unclean ; 
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall 
Corrupts the race, and taints us all. 

He fell at Jesus' knees, and said, " Depart from me, I 
am a sinful man ! " He had a real, personal sense of his 
unworthiness, and in straightforward speech he owned 
himself to be what he saw that he was. He did not 
substitute his parents, or mankind, for himself in his 
real confession before Jesus Christ. 

The Biblical expressions, of which such hymns are 
theological renderings, were originally intensely personal. 
Everything about the Biblical language of confession is 
personal, real, actual. Its most intense expressions of 
human unworthiness rose from the memory of actual 
sins. And the prophets of Jehovah were too much in 
earnest, in their hard grapple with the real and crowding 



io8 The Reality of Faith. 

iniquities of the people, to go off into generalities of 
doctrine about original sin. It is indeed much more 
agreeable to us to indulge in sound words of confession 
of our generic human sinfulness than it is to acknowl- 
edge to our consciences our particular, actual, and indi- 
vidual sins. The general confessions of the Church may 
thus become easy pillows for a half-awakened conscience, 
and in the very act of confessing that we are all misera- 
ble sinners, our eyes may be closed upon ourselves, and 
our souls go to sleep. Language of confession which 
once may have been real, and throbbing with vital 
meanings, becomes our tradition of religious speech. 
Or words which to some men, in some moments of vivid 
conviction, are real as life, and in their violence of self- 
accusation inadequate to their sense of the unutterable 
blackness of sin when seen over against the pure, whit« 
light of the holiness of God, may be used by others as 
the proper forms in which their religious emotions 
should be moulded. Piety becomes thus partly ficti- 
tious, a form borrowed from others' lives — ^a habit of 
speech deemed proper. This is hurtful to conscience. 
A fictitious theological sense of sin has dulled the moral 
sense in many instances. Because the forms of religious 
experience have been borrowed from the Church, and 
put on as the proper garments for professors of religion, 
the piety of even Christian men has sometimes lacked 
truth in the inward parts, and they have been oblivious 
of some very unbecoming sins while wearing the Chris- 
tian habit of general confession of the sinfulness of 
their lives. Any untruthfulness in our religious habits 
or modes of speech cannot fail of bad moral reactions 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 109 

upon our lives. An honest ounce of real conviction of 
a sin, is better than a pound of general acknowledgment 
of our human sinfulness. An act of real repentance 
before God and man for actual sin is more like the true 
penitence which Jesus enjoined upon his friends than a 
willingness to allow in every prayer that we are worth- 
less worms. It is said that there used to be in the types 
of religious experience a deeper sense of sin than is 
often manifested now-a-days. But, granting for the 
moment the fact, and not stopping to note other limita- 
tions, or reactions upon character, of that earlier type of 
religious experience in New England, this one present 
fact is clear ; — we cannot make a modern congregation 
of people return along the same lines of religious expe- 
rience through which our fathers came up out of the 
depths. And if we seek to restore the forms and the 
fashions of their religious life — forms which may have 
been most natural and honest to them — but which are 
not so to us, we shall be in great danger of falling our- 
selves, and of leading others to fall, into a fictitious 
religious experience, and a hurtful dishonesty in our 
secret religious life. But the last place in all this 
world for anything artificial, or not perfectly true to 
ourselves, is the presence of Jesus Christ, and before his 
cross. For our Lord came to reveal God to men just 
as God is in his own eternal Christ-likeness ; and he 
came also to show human hearts to themselves just as 
they look in God's pure eye. Jesus of Nazareth was 
the most real of men. The fashion of no age was upon 
his manner of life, and no guile ever lighted upon his 
lips. He did not live in a fictitious world created by 



no The Reality of Faith. 

his own thoughts, and peopled with his own imagina- 
tions. Jesus lived out in the open, and in full, clear 
view of the realities of the kingdom of God. The Son 
of man is the one absolutely unartificial, or real, man of 
human history. Amid these passing forms of things 
which blind our eyes, and these fashions of the world 
which delude our hearts, he walked with God, knowing 
the Father's thoughts, and, even while his feet pressed 
our earthly trial- way down towards death, ever conscious 
of himself as being, in his own pure peace, "the Son of 
man which is in heaven.'^ Hence everything about the 
words of Jesus bears the impress of reality. Hence the 
New Testament is always the most real of books. This 
Gospel we know is a Gospel of real life. These words 
of the Lord are realities revealing themselves to whom- 
soever will look and see. Jesus reveals everything 
around him, — ^the mysteries of God's thoughts, and the 
hearts of men — all as they are. Jesus is himself the 
mystery of the ages becoming light, and shining before 
our eyes. You know that in the self-revelation of some 
word of Christ you have understood yourselves better 
than you ever did before. Or if you have not, you 
may. No man ever felt Jesus' eye upon him, and went 
away without a look into his own heart which he had 
never had so clearly before. Some men went away from 
Christ to the judgment. The thoughts of many hearts, 
as Simeon foresaw, were revealed by him. Jesus' Gospel, 
therefore, being thus intensely personal, real, and reveal- 
ing, is the most honest thing in this whole world. It is 
no form ; no fiction of life ; no exaggeration of feeling ; 
no mere speech about God and the world to come ; it is 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 1 1 1 

the one essentially and perfectly honest thing in this 
world of words and forms, and fictions of life. When 
we really understand Jesus' word with regard to any 
question of life, we have reached down to the truth, the 
principle, the law, the divine fact, at the bottom and 
heart of it. But if our faith is something put on our 
lives ; something strained, assumed, not quite real to us, 
we may be sure we know the mind that was in Jesus too 
imperfectly, and not as we should seek to learn Christ's 
real answer to the thoughts of our hearts. It will not 
do for us to be content in religion with anything which 
we have not made our own. The language of faith is 
"I believe ; "—not, "My father believed;'' or, "My 
neighbor believes." We cannot be Christian successes 
of men and women upon borrowed capital of faith. 

I come back now with this thought of the perfect 
human honesty of Jesus' Gospel for life to the subject 
which is the burden of this sermon, viz ; — our sense of 
personal sinfulness. It would do you no good if in 
preaching as I would to-day upon the sinfulness of sin 
and the duty of immediate repentance, I should repeat 
to you extracts from the sermons of Jonathan Edwards. 
Those words were real to him. They would not be to 
you. He had as a reality in his life a daily sense of the 
holiness of God in heaven. There shone before him the 
divine holiness burning with light ! It awed him, but it 
attracted him. It humbled him to the dust, but it lifted 
him up also to heights of prophetic vision of God's 
righteous judgments. And these experiences he uttered 
in the words which were the natural language of relig- 
ious experience in his day. They were impressive 



1 1 2 The Reality of Faith. 

realities of speech, therefore, to his hearers. But 
Edwards would reason of the divinity which he experi- 
enced in different forms of speech now. While, how- 
ever, we fail to make the habit of life with which 
Providence has clothed us answer to his forms, or to the 
modes of any other age than just our own, shall we 
miss the truths which have been the real powers of the 
world to come in the lives of all the saints ? We must 
lose the substance of faith unless we are honest enough 
and brave enough to go straight to Jesus' Gospel for 
ourselves, and to take the truths of the Spirit as we may 
find words to receive them in the daily language of our 
own hearts. 

How, then, — to keep the main question foremost, — are 
you men and women, you young people, born as you 
have been in good homes, trained from childhood in the 
first principles of Christian conscience, and with lives 
blossoming with fair hopes, or bearing good deeds known 
of all men, — how are such as you to be convinced of 
sin, brought in penitence to the cross, and led to ask the 
old question of lost sinners, — What must I do to be 
saved? This most pertinent and personal question, I 
would try to answer, as I believe we may answer in the 
simplest and most straightforward manner all religious 
questions of our day, by consulting not with flesh nor 
blood, not even with the prophets or the apostles, by 
stopping not until we stand before Jesus himself with 
liis eye upon us. We are to see ourselves in Jesus' eye. 
We are to know ourselves through Christ. We are to 
know what we are, wliat we ought to be, what we should 
confess, what we may become, as we fall like Peter at 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 1 1 3 

Jesus' knees, and remember ! Let his divinity once 
flash upon your soul as it did upon Peter's, and you 
would need no sermon to convince you of your personal 
unworthiness and need. Christ's way of convincing 
the world of sin is by showing it God. If we could 
see him in his divine Manhood and ourselves before 
him, no words would need to be spoken. Our inmost 
instinct would come out in the words of real confession, 
" Depart from me ; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." 
But the distance of eighteen centuries lies between us and 
the supernal flashings of that eye of divinity. And we 
can find in the present half-Christianized world many 
artificial standards of character beneath which to shelter 
ourselves and our desires of life. We are as good as 
others. We have been guilty of none but little sins. 
We have given to the poor. We have been governed 
for the most part by good feelings. So had Peter. But 
what made him, when he saw God revealing his presence 
in a miracle, fall to the ground with that cry, — "Depart 
from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord?" We say it 
was conscience. That moment when Jesus looked upon 
him, conscience awoke under the eye of the Lord. But 
that does not seem to be all. There was more than a flash 
of conscience in Peter's sudden recollection of himself. 
His remembering, his repentance, was his whole soul 
realizing its darkness, its unworthiness, its littleness, its 
own measureless need, as God shone through it. He 
went out self-revealed before God manifest in the flesh. 
My friends, I might set conscience up in this pulpit 
for you to look at, and for it to look through you and 
me. I might call our sin to judgment in the name of 

8 



114 ^'^^ Reality of Faith, 

conscience. I might proclaim the inexorableness of law 
and the natural certainties of retribution. I might 
leave all gross passions and all great sins outside, and 
take the simplest, smallest sin which we all must confess, 
and let that be seen in the beam of light of a perfect 
conscience. I might take thus the single, actual sin, of 
which many times we all have been guilty, the petty sin 
of being cross, and show under the analysis of an elec- 
tric light of white conscience what a venomous, loath- 
some thing that small sin is ; — how it is a worm upon 
the honor of manhood, and a blight upon the beauty of 
womanhood ; how it is a violation of the rights of our 
neighbor, — our nearest neighbor too often in our own 
homes ; how, if that sin had might as it has evil, it 
would make life a discord, and ruin a world ; how it is 
in its own nature a mockery of God's sunshine, and a 
blow against love ; how, if that sin of a cross word, or 
a deed thoughtlessly hard — ^too small a sin we think 
when we become aware of it, and the evil mood passes 
from us, to be confessed — be held under the illumination 
of a powerful conscience, it is seen to be a spirit of mis- 
chief which would sting the heart of goodness ; a sin of 
ingratitude and meanness which beats, though in impo- 
tent littleness, against eternal law and harmony, and 
pecks in petty spite at the hand of the Mercy which 
would feed us ; a small sin, which when we realize it as 
it is, would be great enough to cause an angel who could 
commit it to fly from heaven's gate ; a sin gross and 
wretched enough, could we feel its despicableness, to 
make the proudest man or woman of us turn red at 
heart for very shame, and to convince us that we are far 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 115 

from perfect, — not whole, but still broken and wrangling 
souls. Yet even this illumination of conscience is not 
the full condemnation of a sin. Carry that sin of yours 
back until you see Jesus looking upon it. See it — what 
it is — in his flashing of God upon it. Lay that sin of 
yours upon the brightness of God. Conceive, if you 
can, of that common sin of yours and mine as ever once 
committed by Jesus Christ ! It would blot out the 
glory of his life from these Gospels. It would take 
away our Lord. See that sin against God's splendor ! 
Imagine, if you can, God committing that little sin ! 
The throne of light would be darkened forever, should 
what you esteem that little passing shadow upon a 
human life fall one moment upon God's glory ! The 
least thought of sin carried up to Christ, to God, and 
conceived of as his, becomes unendurable. Why? 
Because it is sin. Because it is exceeding sinful. But 
that is where every sin great or small shall be carried 
for its last judgment. Up to the great white throne ! 
We must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. 

Beloved, if our heart condemn us, God is greater 
than our heart, and knoweth all things. That means, 
among other meanings, that if conscience is enough to 
convict us of sins, God is greater than conscience, and, 
as we shall know ourselves under his eye, we shall have 
something of Peter's conviction of his own unworthiness 
when the Lord looked upon him, and he remembered, 
and went out and wept bitterly. 

Let me specify two or three particulars which are 
brought out in Jesus' revelation of men to themselves. 

He made men, whom his divinity searched, under- 



ii6 The Reality of Faith, 

stand that they were personally responsible for their own 
real characters. He did riot allow his disciples to con- 
demn men for their misery, or their misfortunes, or the 
consequences of their circumstances, or any of those 
influences which meet from beyond their own walls in 
men's lives. But he made every soul of man realize 
that within life's circumstances there is a living centre 
of personal responsibility. He did not reason about it. 
He did not need to argue it, for he himself was the 
demonstration of it, he was himself the living, shining 
evidence of man's personal responsibility and duty 
before God. Peter never once thought of the divine 
predestination determining his act of unmanliness when 
Jesus' eye rested upon him. He knew he himself had 
done what he ought not to have done, what with 
Jesus' glance piercing his soul he despised himself for 
having done. Jesus made men understand, also, that in 
their sinning they have to do with personal beings. We 
do not sin against abstractions ; or against a system of 
commandments only ; — we are persons in a society of 
persons of which God is the centre and the source. All 
sin is against the realities of a most personal universe. 
Sin strikes against beings. Peter sinned against the 
Lord who had chosen him, and who was about to die 
for him. The sinfulness of sin is not that it is simply 
a transgression of a law ; but it beats against love ; — 
all sin is against love, against all love; for it is sin 
against the living, personal being of God. 

Again, as Jesus Christ showed men themselves in 
their sins, he showed them also that those sins of theirs 
are something which God cannot endure forever. They 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 117 

must not be. They shall not be. God cannot always 
endure them, and be the God he is. Jesus said he did 
not come to judge the world ; and yet again he said ; 
" Now is the judgment of this world." His presence 
before men did judge their sins. It could not help it, 
any more than the sun can help revealing the earth 
while it shines to bless it. Jesus' life among men 
showed how unlike everything which God can love, and 
wish to have last with him in eternity, a human sin is. 
Even now when we think of some of the cruelties 
of this world, we ask, How can God endure them ? It 
seems as if he must come himself and put a stop to 
these things. We think thus, we ask sometimes this 
question of doubting faith, because we are Christians, 
beginning to see in our Christian light how contrary to 
all heaven the wrongs of men and women and little 
children are. God in heaven, then, cannot and will not 
stand the sin of the world forever. Jesus the Christ, in 
bringing God's character directly to bear upon this 
world in his own sinless, saving life, knew that he was 
also of necessity judging the world, and in his death 
condemning its sin with an infinite condemnation. Our 
sins, then, the actual every-day sins of our lives, are 
condemnable. They are by Christ's life condemned 
already. God on high cannot suffer us to go on in this 
way forever. He must redeem us and make us like 
himself, or he must do something else worthy of himself 
with us. This is morally certain. If there be a holy 
God — and Jesus Christ, standing supreme in the midst 
of our turbid history of sin, is the visible evidence that 
there is a holy God, — then it is morally certain that 



1 1 8 The Reality of Faith. 

this long human contradiction of God — ^the sin of the 
world — must somewhere be brought to a stop. It may 
be to a sudden stop. It cannot run on and on forever. 
God is God. 

And one thing more is clear as a star in the mystery 
of Godliness. There is one thing more which we need 
to know which Jesus makes bright as day in his Gospel 
of God to man. When Peter was at Jesus' knees say- 
ing in the first honest instinct of a man who saw him- 
self, " I am a sinful man ; " — Jesus stood over him 
radiant like a God, and said, "Fear not.'' Such is 
God's lovely attitude towards every penitent at the feet 
of his Almightiness ! Fear not ! Sin is forgiven and 
all its darkness made bright in the love which reveals it. 
The cloud of our sky becomes a glory at the touch of 
the sun. If we will not come to the light to be made 
known and to be forgiven, then we remain in the dark- 
ness. Penitence is holding ourselves up in God's pure 
and infinite light, and letting him shine our darkness 
away. Fear not; sin is vouchsafed forgiveness in the 
same love which shows it to be sin, and condemns it. 
That divine look Avliich made Peter remember what a 
wreck of all his manhood he was making, was also a 
look of forgiveness from the heart of the Saviour who 
saw the splendid possibilities of a man in the crushed 
disciple, and who was about to die that he might open 
for him and all men the gate to glory. 

So may it be with us. Sincere conviction of sin is 
the beginning of the birth of manhood worthy in 
Christ's name to be crowned ! Out of penitence the 
life blossoms into the light. God is love. The lost are 



Knowledge of Self Through Christ. 1 1 9 

found. We are called by the divine glory and virtue. 
And still to our city Immanuel comes, and in our homes, 
in the language of our own sins and needs and hopes of 
life, Jesus preaches the Gospel of the kingdom of God, 
sapng : " The time is fulfilled ; and the kingdom of 
God is at hand : Repent ye, and believe the Gospel." 



IX. 

GOD'S FORGETFULNESS OF SIN. 

" jFor 3E bDiII iox%iht lf){fr tnuiuits, Kutj H hill nmtmitt li&jefr sin no 
moM." — ^Jeremiah xxxi. 34. 

We believe that we are living souls, and that death and 
destruction cannot put us out of existence. We are also 
embodied souls; and if even the gross matter of this 
present world can furnish a brain fitted to be the organ 
of mind, much more shall the ethereal matter of the 
world to come furnish the finer material for our freer life 
in a spiritual body. 

But this belief in ourselves as embodied souls bom 
and destined for immortality, carries with it consequences 
which startle us when we think of them. One momen- 
tous truth involved in the nature of our present life, and 
belonging to the substance of the hope of its continuance 
in the resurrection, is the fact of memory. One of the 
appalling obstacles between sinful men now, and their 
eternal blessedness hereafter, is the indestructible fact of 
the memory of sin. If memory were not a book of 
nature itself; if memory were merely reminiscence, 
dependent upon our wills, so that we could remember or 
forget as we please ; then every one after death might 
leave his sin buried in oblivion at death, and begin life 
over again in a better world, if he would, like an inno- 
cent child, new-born in heaven. But is memory an act 
120. 



God's Forgetfulness of Sin. 121 

of will, or is it an organic fact, a part and state of the 
substance and the life both of body and soul ? And if 
the latter be the fact, how are we ever to forget the evil 
of this world which has entered into our being, and 
become pai-t of our life ? 

The poet Dante, as he wandered through the forest of 
the terrestrial paradise, came to a stream which on the 
one side was called Lethe, and on the other Eunoe, for 
it possessed the double virtue to take away remembrance 
of offense, and to bring remembrance back of every good 
deed done. Immersed in Lethe's wave he forgets his 
fault, and from Eunoe's stream he returned. 



E'en as new plants reneVd with foliage new, 
Pure and made apt for mounting to the stars." 

What would not many a burdened soul give if it could 
find that water of deep oblivion, and come forth regen- 
erate from that stream of blessed memories? Many 
guilty souls there are who would gladly turn toward a 
better life, and follow virtue like a star, if they could 
break loose form the heavy memory of their past which 
holds them back and keeps them down. But they can 
not destroy that past from the minds of others, or from 
their own memory. They would be different men, and 
might have a future, if their past were not an indestruct- 
ible part of their present existence. The future is 
mortgaged to the past. 

Where flows, then, the stream of happy forgetfulness ? 
A poet's di-eam may not beguile us ; — what are the facts, 
the stern, unchangeable facts of memory ? Is memory 



122 The Reality of Faith, 

an unalterable record of life ? And if it is life of our 
life, and part and substance of our growth, what way 
of escaping from this earth's tragic history of sin and 
death. can we ever hope for? Shall the shadow of this 
earth always lie before us upon our path ? 

The facts of memory are these. The mind of man is 
a chamber of memories — a hall of echoes — a gallery of 
endless whispers — a house haunted by shades of the past. 
The mind is one labyrinth of memories — like a catacomb 
of the dead. Everything we have thought or done has 
its resting place in it ; passage leads into passage, cell 
opens after cell; there is an endless succession of 
chambers in memory ; some are narrow and dark, and 
rarely visited ; some spacious and more frequented ; and 
we search through our memories, following a slight 
thread of association as a clue, or turning hither and 
thither our attention, as one does a flickering torch in 
passing through a subterranean catacomb of Rome. 
Recollection is as the torch in the traveller's hand through 
this endless labyrinth of memory ; but memory itself is 
the receptacle of all our past. There is a place in it for 
all the deeds done in the body. Or if it be urged that 
its capacity is limited, and that the long buried in 
memory must be cast out for that which has just passed 
into its quiet chambers, still the habits of our past have 
made and form these very chambers of memory ; and 
though many deeds seem to have been lost, and name be 
engraven over name in memory, still the record of the 
years remains in the structure itself of the soul. All 
that the mind has been used for remains a memory 
wrought into its own structure and form. 



God's Forgetfulness of Sin, 123 

It is a fact, then, which the organization of the body 
and the laws of the mind alike attest, that we are not the 
makers or the masters of our own memories. Only 
within narrow limits can we recollect or forget at our 
pleasure. Memory is a physical and mental fact to a 
large degree independent of will. I spoke of memory as 
an organic fact. I mean that it is a fact of the organism 
of the body, as well as an essential element of the mind. 
The body has a memory of its own which a man can no 
more alter or efface than he can add one cubit to his 
stature, or change the features of his countenance. This 
body, although it be but a passing form, a mere flow of 
atoms, nothing but matter in perpetual flux, neverthe- 
less has a life-long memory of its own. It keeps every 
scar. It retains in our features ancestral lineaments. It 
brings our fathers back to life in its involuntary motions 
and gestures; nay, it brings back the ages before our 
fathers were born, and in its structure and growth pre- 
serves and reproduces the whole process of creation from 
the lower forms of life up to man ; and it has also its 
daily memory of our own acts and training. The eye 
has its memory ; the tone of the voice, the ear, the very 
finger-tips on the keys have their memories ; the nerves 
have their memories beneath our consciousness, often 
beyond our wills ; every organic cell in this body is a 
chamber written over with memories ; and the brain is a 
great echoing-hall of memory ; the two hemispheres of 
the brain are rightly called the sounding-boards of all 
that transpires within the body. Sensation, thought, 
volition have each their corresponding echo and memory 
in the brain. 



124 ^^^ Reality of Faith, 

Memory, then, is organic. It is a bodily fact. It is a 
part of our embodiment. No ingenuity of human art 
has ever invented to watch the watchman a self-register- 
ing machine so accurate, so constant, so unalterably true, 
as is the human brain — God^s register of the deeds done 
in the body. Carry now this truth one step further. 
If in the present physical basis of life there is provision 
made for memory ; if matter so gross as the brain can 
become the register of the mind ; much more may 
memory be continuous and comprehensive in the spiritual 
embodiment of the soul ; much more shall it be made 
perfect in the resurrection. If we believe that this life 
is only the beginning of us, then every consideration 
which proves that memory is a present organic fact of 
our existence, goes to show further that it will be a con- 
tinued process hereafter ; that it shall be then even more 
pictorial and comprehensive of our life. It is not difficult 
to imagine how every line and impression of the present 
life shall be etched upon the substance of the soul which 
goes hence, or how the spiritual body, fair or demoniacal, 
shall be set free from the present mortality as an embodied 
memory of our earthly lives. The types of the printer's 
case may be distributed, ready to be taken up again in a 
new form ; but if the copy has once been struck off, the 
writing remains though the types be distributed. So 
these atoms of matter in their present arrangement in our 
brains are not ours forever. They co-exist in us only for 
our momentary use. The form shall be broken up, and 
they shall be distributed, dust to dust, and earth to earth ; 
but the soul shall have taken, before this bodily form is 
broken up, the copy of this mortal life and its deeds, and 



God's Forgetfulness of Sm. 125 

hence shall continue with the impression of it stamped 
upon it forever. The soul is now taking the form and 
shape of the thought and acts of the life in the body. 
The soul going from the body into the unseen is not the 
same soul that came to itself in this body. It is the soul 
with the impression of life left upon it. It is the soul 
formed and moulded for the future state according to the 
deeds done in the body. It shall enter the resurrection- 
body not as it entered this body of flesh. The materials 
of that spiritual form of existence shall be associated by 
its associations, and adapted to its adaptations, and more 
even than in this grosser element of existence and in this 
imperfect body shall the soul appear in its form and 
motion to be what it is in its spirit and purpose ; the 
inner thought shall create more unmistakably the out- 
ward semblance, and memory shall be the visible 
embodiment of all that the life has been for good or evil. 
I am reasoning in such statements from the less to the 
greater ; from the capacity of the grosser element to the 
capacity of the more ethereal ; and I say, therefore, if we 
believe that we have souls now growing in these bodies 
for immortality, if we believe that we are destined to 
awake after death in some organic form or spiritual 
embodiment, then w^e must also believe that we cannot 
escape from our past, and that we cannot find flowing 
through death's dark valley any stream of forgetfulness ; 
for memory is a part and element of all organized life 
here and hereafter, and we carry in ourselves a book of 
remembrance which no change of outward circumstance 
can eflace or destroy, a book written in the lines of our 
own being and preserved in the form and substance of 



126 The Reality of Faith, 

our souls. Memory can never commit suicide, and cease 
to be. 

But this is not all. Not only do we have in our own 
organization a memory of ourselves which we cannot 
tear from us, but also the miiverse has a memory of us. 
The memory of men's lives is a part of the universe. 
The record of our life is a line written in the book of 
things. It belongs to nature. We cannot blot it out. 
And if we carry this truth of memory still further and 
higher, we rise to the conception of the unalterable mem- 
ory of the Eternal. Can God forget ? Can God put 
our sin out of his eternal remembrance ? Can God ever 
make our sin to his own thought as though it were not, 
as though it had never been? We might indeed say 
that God possesses in an unlimited degree a power which 
we possess in a limited degree ; and that as we put things 
for hours and days out of mind, as we can hold under 
the illumination of attention now this, now that recollec- 
tion, and let everything else meanwhile be buried in for- 
getfulness ; so might God, if he would, put our sin out 
of his memory forever. And we may say, moreover, 
that should God be pleased to remember no more our 
iniquities against us, then by his unlimited power over 
memory as an infinite Will, our sins might never be per- 
mitted to return, or to cast their shadows of fear again 
between God's love and the sinner he would forgive. 
Cannot God put what he pleases out of miud, and by his 
infinite power of will keep it out of his thought forever ? 
Cannot God mil not to remember our sin ? 

We must look here also calmly at the facts. This is 
not simply a question of power over will. It is not 



God's Forgetfulness of Sin. 127 

simply a question as to what an Almighty God can do ; 
but what God as an infinitely perfect moral Being will 
do. In the unlimited power of the divine will over the 
divine memory or thought, we might find the Lethe of 
the sin of the world, and the divine oblivion of our 
transgressions for which we pray, if we could imagine 
how God could forget sin, and not, at the same time, 
forget his owti holiness, forget his own righteousness, 
forget some essential attribute of his own divinity. But 
God will not will to forget himself. He cannot deny 
himself. 

Consider well the great difficulties in the way of the 
eternal forgetfulness of the sin of this world. First, sin, 
as has been observed, is an organic part of ourselves. It 
has entered into the life of the soul. Our nature carries 
its scar. We stand as sinners before God. Secondly, 
our sin is a part of the memory of the universe. Our 
evil nature has shown itself to others, and is remem- 
bered. The universe holds it in remembrance. The 
earth has felt our impatient step. The air has vibrated 
to our passionate cry. The sun has seen the flash of 
anger in our eye. Every element has received the 
impression of the deeds which we have done in the body. 
And other souls carry us in their lives on with them to 
the judgment. Thirdly, our lives are written also in 
the thoughts of the Eternal God. He cannot forget us 
though we may forget him. He holds us in perpetual 
remembrance. 

How, then, can sin ever be forgiven and forgotten? 
For surely it is not enough simply that it be forgiven, 
and not forgotten. It is not enough for the happy 



128 The Reality of Faith, 

restoration of a broken human friendship that the wrong 
which broke it should simply be forgiven ; it must also 
be forgotten, or there can be no glad reconciliation, and 
no new, real, and abiding friendship. Two friends who 
have been alienated cannot walk together again, if the 
wronged person is simply willing to forgive; if the 
wrong which separated them is to remain ever present 
in the memory of either of them ; if one sees it in the 
other's eye; if, though not a word be said about it, 
either must be inwardly conscious of it whenever he is 
in the other's presence. If the wrong done cannot be 
forgotten as well as forgiven, it would remain as a great 
gulf fixed between those who once were friends, although 
they should eat again at the same table, walk the same 
path together, and lie down at last in the same grave. 
It would be idle for us then to dream of heaven after 
the sinful life of earth, if these memories of sin are only 
to become quickened and intensified in that sinless world 
hereafter. Death cannot be the rest for which we long, 
if it shall only lay bare the nerve of a sensitive memory. 
Of what avail the companionship of angels, if between 
them and us there shall lie the ever present distance of 
the thought of our earthly sin and shame ? if we cannot 
banish beyond all recognition the evil which has found 
lodging in our bosoms ? if the memory of it shall always 
be in our thoughts or theirs ? if the whispers of our own 
hearts condemning us shall be the judgment of a moral 
universe reverberating around us ? if these heavens which 
have looked down upon the long history of human 
passion, and this earth which has been the sepulchre of 
human crimes, shall not pass away into a new heavens 



God's Forgetfulness of Sin. 129 

and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness ? How 
shall we stand before God, and be perfectly at our ease 
under his pure eye, happy in unconscious sinlessness in 
the light of his holy blessedness, if our sin is to be with 
us also there in his presence, in our memory and in his 
thought of us ? 

There are those who tell us that God out of his mere 
benevolence can forgive sin, and open the heaven of his 
holy presence to the sinner who would return. Yes, so 
might a kind human friend say to one who had done him 
wrong, — ^'I do not care ; you may come back at any 
time and sit at my table if you please ; I will not speak 
of the offense ; I am willing to let it pass ; '^ but still, 
although unmentioned, the wTong also would be there, 
sitting at the same table with the two who sit down 
together again. The wrong once done shall be always 
as a shadow between them, until something be done to 
put it away ; until something be done to enable both to 
forget it, something that shall cost some sacrifice, some 
suffering, some reparation for the wrong, some humilia- 
tion, and some manifestation of the evil really inflicted 
and the pain really felt on account of the sin which is to be 
forgiven. Something must be said and done once for all 
of the nature of an atonement for the sin which separates 
those two, in order that each may experience the joy of a 
restored friendship, and that full reconciliation in w^hich 
the wrong done is to be henceforth morally forgotten as 
well as forgiven. Surely, then, it is not good theology 
to imagine God to be reconciled to this world at a less 
effort and at a less cost of sacrifice and suffering than is 
required for the perfect binding up of a broken human 



130 The Reality of Faith. 

friendship. Reconciliation does cost humiliation, suiFer- 
ing, self-vindication, at least through sorrow and pain 
for the sin committed, on the part of the person who 
would forgive, and then the recognition also of this effort 
and cost of forgiveness on the part of him who is to be 
forgiven. Otherwise the forgiveness does not reach to 
the bottom of the wrong, and the healing is only on the 
surface of life. There is no real reconciliation between 
men until by some work of grace, by some gracious 
condemnation once for all of the wrong which was done, 
by some humiliation of suffering for it on the one side, 
and answering penitence on the other, by some agreement 
or new covenant of good-will into which both can enter, 
it is accomplished and henceforth clearly understood 
that the offense is to be both forgiven and forgotten. 

And shall the infinitely perfect One be less human in 
his forgiveness than we ? How can the Holy One for- 
give and forget our sin ? Heaven's answer is the Cross 
of Christ ! Through his work of atonement for sin is 
opened the divine way of forgetfulness of the sin of the 
world. God would always from eternity forgive sin ; he 
is pleased in his pure grace to forgive sin ; but that he 
may forgive sin, and forget it, that he may remember it 
no more against us forever, he puts in the place of that 
dark memory of what man has done the bright memory 
of what Christ has done for us. That gracious and 
grateful memory ever present in God's thought of this 
world of Christ's perfect obedience unto death ; of his 
one finished act of condemnation of all sin ; of his full 
and perfect victory over all the power and death of sin ; 
oh ! that is the complete atonement for our faith to 



God's Forgetfulness of Sin. 131 

accept, the full reconciliation, the new bond and testament, 
the restored and final friendship between God and man. 
God remembers man henceforth as he stands before him 
in the nature and grace of Christ. Hence he can forget 
man as he Avas without Christ. Justification is God^s 
covering the knowledge of what we once were in our 
sins by the blessed and all-transfiguring thought of what 
his own love in the suffering Redeemer has done and 
always is for us. And this is no mere act of power or 
violence over memory. It is no arbitrary act of forget- 
fulness. It contradicts no ethical principle of memory, 
human or divine. It is a moral hiding from the divine 
remembrance of the sin of the world, which has been 
already and once for all condemned in the same suffering 
for it by which the divine willingness to forgive was 
made manifest. To say that God can forgive, and there- 
fore he mil, without any atonement, without any realiza- 
tion of his own righteousness in his act of grace, would 
be to say that God can forget law, and right, and his 
pure self-respect ; that God can veil his full moral glory 
behind the single attribute of his mercy. Not so do the 
Scriptures reveal God to us. He cannot deny himself. 
He cannot sacrifice one divine viitue or grace to another. 
In all things he is wholly God. The whole moral per- 
fection of deity must be satisfied in every act and thought 
of God. God cannot, then, by a mere act of kindly 
suppression of his own knowledge forget that hardened 
Pharaoh would not let his people go, or that Judas 
betrayed his Anointed with a kiss. He cannot by an 
act of almighty restraint laid upon his own omniscience 
forget the death of the martyrs whose blood cries to 



132 The Reality of Faith. 

heaven^ or the wrong of a single woman's life suifering 
under the cruelty of man's passions, or the offense done 
the least of his little children by a selfish w^orld. Surely 
not by stroke of omnipotence can this world's history of 
sin and woes be annihilated from the mind of the Eternal. 
God has not sought thus to put our sin far from him. 
His glory is not in his power, but in his love. He has 
provided a better way, the only way of putting our sin 
from him, the w^ay of moral substitution, not of physical 
annihilation, the way of moral reconciliation and justifica- 
tion. God puts his own knowledge of our sin far from 
him as Christ comes nigh and ascends the throne of his 
majesty in his perfect confession of the sinfulness of our 
sin, in his perfect obedience in our nature to God's holy 
will, and in his perfect oneness with us in our humilia- 
tion before God. God in Christ can forgive and forget 
sin without denying himself. Our sin, which God 
always would forgive, can be sin forgiven and forgotten, 
because it has been at last perfectly confessed before God, 
and God's necessary pain over it has been realized and 
revealed in the sufferings in it, and for it, of the Son of 
his love, and its condemnation, once for all, has been 
visited upon it in the death of him who prays in God's 
pure will that his enemies may be forgiven. In view 
of Christ and his Cross there remains no moral need that 
God should remember our sin a second time against us, 
and he will reijaember it no more against us forever. 
The eternal presence of the Christ in our nature and 
for us before the Father is the sufficient reason for his 
eternal forgetfulness of our sin which he would forgive. 
God sees us in Christ. God thinks of us always in 



God's Forgetfidness of Sin. 133 

Christ. There is henceforth no moral reason why he 
should think of us otherwise than in Christ. He has no 
divine need to remember us otherwise than in Christ's one- 
ness with us, and our union with Christ. We are Christ's, 
and Christ is God's. Therefore all things are ours. 

There is no violence done anything moral or divine in 
God's vicarious forgetfulness of man's sin in his eternal 
memory of Christ and his Cross. If, then, God has 
made such a morally sufficient atonement for sin that he 
can forgive it, as he would forgive it, and can forget it 
without denying himself, it follows also that we our- 
selves shall be able to put hereafter our own sin of this life 
out of mind, and all other pure beings shall be able to let it 
pass as a dream of the night. The memory of it, indeed, 
we cannot suppose to be physically annihilated. We 
might recall it, and others could recall it, if moral 
reasons for remembering it shall remain. But the divine 
reconciliation leaves no reason for any holy being to 
bring up our earthly history hereafter to our shame and 
condemnation. We shall always be known, it is true, 
as the ransomed of the Lord. We shall have the name 
of the Lamb in our foreheads. " These are the earth-born, 
whose robes are made white in the blood of the Lamb," — 
shall be the grateful story of our lives to be told in 
heaven. We, ourselves, shall delight in the history of 
redemption. We shall remember that God has graciously 
and righteously permitted us to forget those things which 
are behind, as we press forward, forgiven spirits, into the 
perfections of the kingdom of heaven. In the knowledge 
of the forgiveness of sins are now new births of the spirit, 
and the soul whose sin has once been divinely forgiven and 



134 T^^^ Reality of Faith. 

forgotten may in that glad consciousness begin to live a 
new life of hope in which all things shall be new, and it 
be itself a new creature in Christ Jesus. It shall be 
changed from glory unto glory until at last the soul that 
once was a dark memory of sin shall become as the 
image of Christ, itself renewed and made pure by the 
grace in which it is forgiven, and it shall cast no more 
shadow in the light of God^s holy presence. 

Thus the recollection of what Christ has done and is 
for us, the inflowing health of the new life, and the 
victory over sin and death shall take the place of the 
self-consciousness of sin and shame, perfectly and con- 
tinuously at last, as even now they begin in part and in 
the best moments among Christians to do. The world's 
history of sin and death shall become a strain of gratitude 
and love in the harmonies of the new song of Moses and 
the Lamb. God shall transform and transfigure all our 
recollection of sin and suffering into the consciousness of 
love and life, not by the magic touch of power over us, 
but by the renewing touch of his grace ; — as he changes 
the dark cloud of the night into the glory of the dawn 
by causing the morning light to shine through it. There 
is no other way than God's gracious way of moral sub- 
stitution for the removal of the memory of sin. It is 
not the violation of any lower law of nature, but is the 
operation in our redeemed natures of the higher law of 
love. The light of God in Christ transubstantiates our 
dark consciousness of guilt into joy and peace in the 
Holy Ghost. There is no other name given under 
heaven whereby we must be saved. Who of us will not 
accept so great salvation ? 



MAKING FOR OURSELVES SOULS. 

" In sour patittui ^t si^all torn gour souls." — Luke xxi, 19. 

The revised translation restores this word of Jesus to its 
original force. The Lord did not bid his disciples simply 
to possess their souls in patience. He told them that 
through endurance they were to win their souls. Souls, 
then, are for us to win. Literally the word used by 
Jesus means, procure for yourselves souls. Life is to be 
to us, in some sense, an acquisition of soul. We should 
not press, indeed, a single word too far in the interpre- 
tation of Scripture ; but we may often follow profitably, 
as far as we can, the direction in which an inspired word 
may start up, and send oif, our thoughts. This active 
verb used by Jesus in relation to the soul is suggestive. 
The text, at least, swings open the gate to a stimulating 
inquiry. How may the disciples acquire their own 
souls ? Is it possible that men may have something to 
do in procuring for themselves souls ? Are we to work 
with the Creator in making our own souls ? We usually 
think of human souls as so many ready-made products 
of nature bestowed upon us at birth, — so many recep- 
tacles for life of different sizes, — and we are to fill them 
up with experience and education as best we can, as bees 
fill their hives. But Jesus used of the souls of his dis- 
ciples a word of purchase and acquisition. We are to go 

135 



136 The Reality of Faith, 

into life, and, as men in business gain possessions, we are 
to procure our souls from life. Souls, then, may not be 
such ready-made products of nature as we are accustomed 
to imagine ; the souls of men are possibly but the seeds 
of immortality. They may be the germs scattered by a 
Spiritual power in this soil of the flesh, and destined to 
spring up, and to grow, if we do not succeed in killing 
them, into the powers of an endless life. In some real 
sense a true life will be an acquisition of soul. Its daily 
ambition may be, — more soul, and better ! 

This truth that we are to procure for ourselves souls, 
may become more visible to us if we begin by turning 
the subject over and looking at the reverse of it. You 
have seen men losing soul in life. It is a fact that the 
heat and drought of worldliness cause the souls of 
men to shrink. Men's very souls seem sometimes to 
become dry, hard, and small in selfishness. The process 
of soul-wasting and soul-shrinking is continually going 
on in the world. There was a man born apparently for 
large things. His mother's eye brightened as she looked 
down through the years away into his golden prospects. 
His father's pride saw him climbing thrones of power. 
At thirty, at fifty, people who knew him when a boy, 
speak of what a man he might have been. Some sin at 
the root of the life has shrivelled the soul which once 
began to grow. How souls born for nobility shrink in 
the heat of some ignoble ambition ! A prince of men, 
capable of the power of a statesman's idea, enters the 
race for office, — and shrinks to the measure of a poli- 
tician's soul ! The Lord of life hung out a pure ideal, 
shining like a star, before that artist's or poet's genius ; 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 137 

but his first success filled his eye, — and he serves the 
fashion of the hour ayIio might have reigned with kingly- 
souls ! God ordained that man to be a preacher and 
prophet of the kingdom of heaven ; but after his first 
larger search for truth, he lost in his much knowledge 
the humble love of truth, and his soul shrunk into an 
ecclesiastic ! Other souls, too, are dissipating themselves 
in pleasure ; or the grip upon a man of his business may 
leave a soiri dry and juiceless as a sucked orange. 

Look a moment longer at this reverse side of our 
truth, even though it be not altogether pleasant to con- 
template it. You have known men — I have — who seem 
not merely to have lost character or manhood, but who 
seem actually to have lost much of their human nature 
in courses of sin. They seem to have hardly any soul 
left with which to respond to the common feelings and 
motives of humanity. You found that old acquaintance 
living on the husks of the world, and you tried to give 
him something better. He seemed to have lost the 
power to receive it. You tried to help him up again ; 
but he did not seem to have soul enough left to stand up 
even when helped. Such men have lost the power to 
feel themselves what others feel for them. They seem 
to have had the human nature eaten out of them ; and 
they live stolid, insensate, like the brutes that perish. 
We will not say they are hopeless ; we should not say 
God's grace may not still reach down, and touch them, 
and bring back living soul to them ; but when we see 
them, and perceive how our common human nature, 
which has grown in some others into souls so large, lofty, 
and fruitful, has shrunk back in them into its roots, and 



138 The Reality of Faith. 

become shrivelled and dead, we can understand better 
what Jesus meant when he said, " Fear him who is able 
to destroy both soul and body in hell ! " 

From all the wretched knowledge forced upon us by 
the daily record of the evil of the world, it is to my pur- 
pose to seize now only upon this single particular, that 
sin is, or at least seems to be, destructive of human 
nature in men, exhaustive of their very souls. Milton's 
Satan, so strong and commanding in his Satanic purpose, 
may be a correct picture of what sin was when it began ; 
but the picture of an insensate drunkard, a senseless 
idiot, may be a more correct delineation of Satan bound. 
" Sin, when it is finished," — so the Scripture assures us, 
which experience begins already to verify, — ^' bringeth 
forth death." 

Keeping in mind this knowledge of the possible 
wasting of a soul in the world, turn the truth over again, 
and contemplate the happier process of soul-acquisition. 
We all, from our youth up, and down through old age, 
would wish to gain more soul and larger — ^but how ? In 
what ways are we to set about procuring for ourselves 
souls ? 

The first thing for us to do is the thing which those 
men had already done to whom Jesus gave this promise 
that they should win their souls. What they had done — 
the first decisive step which they had taken in the work 
of finding their lives — was not, indeed, to acquaint them- 
selves with all knowledge, or to peer into all mysteries. 
They had not even lingered at the doors of the school 
of the Rabbles. But when One who spake as never 
man spake, and who looked into men's souls with the 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 139 

light of a divine Spirit in his eye, came walking upon 
the beach where they were mending their nets, and bade 
them leave all and follow him, they heard their own 
being commanded as by the king of truth, and at once 
they left all and followed him. They counted not the 
cost; they obeyed, when they found themselves com- 
manded by God in Christ. This promise, — Ye shall 
win your souls, was addressed to men who had surren- 
dered themselves wholly to that which they had seen, and 
knew of God. It was a pledge of soul made to men who 
had the wills of disciples. Two simple words had been 
repeated more than once in their hearing ; — " Repent,^' 
" believe f — and they were willing to make both those 
words facts of their daily purpose and conduct. This 
prime condition of w^inning our souls remains unchanged, 
and no simpler or more searching words for it can be 
framed than those first requirements of Jesus Christ of 
every man ; " Repent," " believe." If a man wishes in 
all sincerity to gain his own soul, he must begin by 
turning with a will from the sin of the world which he 
knows has laid foul, destructive hand upon his life ; he 
must rise, and meet duty, trusting himself with all his 
heart to every whisper of truth and echo of God within 
him. The first step in the way of acquiring our souls, 
let me repeat, is the decision of discipleship. It is* not 
to entertain this feeling, or to possess that knowledge, 
but to put our wills into God's will as the disciples of 
old left all and followed the Master. How can a man 
expect to gain a soul worth keeping, unless he first is 
willing to work with God in making his own life ? We 
put, thus, the condition of winning our souls in the most 



140 The Reality of Faith. 

general principle of it when we say it is to have the will 
of the penitent who would believe ; it is to bring our own 
purposes and desires of life to the decision of discipleship. 
Are we willing, at the core of our own thought of our- 
selves willing, to be disciples of the Truth, to be disciples 
of the Love ? I speak not now of the particular forms, or 
duties, in which this spirit of obedience may be realized. 
With the open Gospels before us, and life's next duty at 
hand, it is not hard for us to put our own decision of 
discipleship to the test. The forms of conversion may 
be manifold as are the fashions of the sunrising. The 
essential thing in Christian discipleship is to be really 
willing to do the Lord's will. In proportion, therefore, 
as Jesus Christ makes God real to men, and reveals the 
righteousness of God all glorious and commanding before 
us, in that degree does his Gospel bring our souls to a 
crisis ; and we determine whether we will win or lose 
ourselves, as we decide duty and obey truth when the 
right thing and the true thing to be thought or done 
shine before us, a revelation from God to us, in Jesus 
Christ. I am confounding this simple essential of the 
disciples' will with no doubtful disputation ; I am say- 
ing that every man to whom the Gospel is preached can 
find not far from him in his own path of life the point 
of decision across which he may step forth to his work 
as a Christian disciple. He will not have to look far or 
long for the duty or the conviction which shall bring to 
the judgment his inner purpose to go his own way, or to 
follow God through his life ; and that place in our path of 
life where the disciple's decision is to be made will always 
be marked in some scarce mistakable manner by these 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 141 

two first requirements which Jesus made the narrow gate 
into his kingdom, — " Repent/^ " believe.'^ 

But after we have made the Christian decision, after 
we have determined that to the best of our knowledge 
and belief we will be disciples — how then are we to 
work with God in making our own souls ? The answer 
to this inquiry may not only be of help to those who 
have confessed Christ as their Lord, but also to those 
who in any doubt or unbelief think often they would be 
glad if, like disciples of old, they could find their Mes- 
siah. For the methods of living and the principles of 
conduct which are profitable to Christians, may prove 
also the right way for those who v/ould find life's Truth 
and Lord. 

I answer then, secondly, w^e are to acquire soul by 
living now with all the soul we do have. If we are to 
win souls from life, we must put our whole souls into 
life ; but the trouble with us is that we often do not. 
We live half-hearted, and with a certain reserve often 
of ourselves from our every-day life in the world. But 
you remember how Jesus insisted that his disciples should 
serve God and love man with all their souls, and with 
all their strength. The way to gain more soul and better 
is to live freely and heartily with all the soul we do 
have. A little reflection may suffice to show us how 
much is involved in such statements. 

There, for example, is a man who is putting his will 
into his business ; yet he is leaving some conviction of 
tlie truth which his life ought to seek out of his work. 
He is toiling like a slave at his task, but not giving his 
immortal self the benefit of so much as a Sabbath hour's 



142 The Reality of Faith. 

outlook towards a world of freedom. He is doing, per- 
haps, his duty towards those dependent upon him, but 
not allowing himself daily the inspiration of a moment's 
prayer for light and life. He is like a Swiss peasant 
among the Alps, bearing steadily his burdens, but never 
looking up. The traveller will forget all the weariness 
of the way as he looks up and sees the Yungfrau's cr}^s- 
tal peak rising into the evening's cloud, leaving him 
thinking of the great white throne, and the glory that 
excelleth. Then, still another man is living somewhat 
religiously, but not throwing himself heartily into the 
opportunities of his life. He may have worked his way 
up to affluence. His property represents will, brains, 
self-denials, persistent toil. So far that man has done 
well. He has earned what he has. He has put himself 
into his work. But many lives just at this point seem 
to stop short. That man who has put himself honor- 
ably into the toil of making money needs also to go on 
and put his whole soul into the work of seeing it well 
spent. A good man has only half done his life's work, 
he has only improved half his opportunity, if he has 
succeeded in making a fortune, and then fails in seeing 
it started off in the best possible directions before he dies. 
A man may gain sterling qualities of character in achiev- 
ing success, honorable success, in business ; and he may 
gain still more soul and better in employing the same 
powers by which he made his money in seeing to it that 
it shall be put to the best possible uses in the world 
which he is soon to leave. In general we fail to acquire 
souls for ourselves from life whenever we settle back into 
ourselves, and do not throw our hearts into every day's 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 143 

opportunities. Another person — to continue this obser- 
vation of the manner in which we easily leave whole 
powers and ranges of ourselves out of our habits of life — 
is thoughtlessly letting the best enthusiasms of his 
youth pass by, while he loiters on the shores of his own 
prospects, never spreading a sail to the heavenly airs 
which invite him to set forth. He hesitates to commit 
himself to the influences which are sent from above ; he 
follows no far purpose ; and by and by that man will be 
found, as so many are found, left hopelessly aground in 
his own oozy selfishness ; a heavenly gale cannot stir him 
now — his life's opportunity has ebbed far away ! Here 
is another man who is living vigorously and even com- 
batively in a part of his own soul. He makes his reason 
his castle. He sallies forth in every direction from that. 
He has his troops of arguments always under arms, and 
treats the whole domain of truth as a land which his 
understanding is to conquer and subdue. But this is a 
very narrow way of thinking. That man of valiant 
understanding resembles the medieval baron in his castle 
on the Khine. That argumentative, warlike understand- 
ing is the feudal baron of the world of thought and 
theology. But this broad earth never could have been 
mastered and explored from the castles of feudalism ; 
and the whole rich universe of truth never can be won 
by the armed questions of the human understanding 
only. There are things which must be loved in order 
that they may be known. There are discoveries of God 
to be made by our hearts going out in humble, happy 
ministry through life, as well as by the proud troops of 
our reasonings. The kingdom of heaven cannot be 



144 T^^^^ Reality of Faith. 

taken by storm, while its gates may open of themselves 
at the knocking of a little child. This man who means 
to live by his reason does well as far as he goes ; only he 
is leaving much of his own soul out of his meagre con- 
clusions — he needs to go to school to his own heart. 
Then the Gospel of heaven may be preached to him. 

And so I might go on holding up a mirror to life, and 
showing how one after another of us lives but in part, 
and how we fail to mn more soul and better from the 
world, because we are so content to live in single cham- 
bers, and even small corners of our own immortal selves. 
But above all these broken, partial lives of men look up 
and behold the Man who lived never in part, but with 
all his heart put daily into his life with men and for 
man. Christ alone may show us what a whole-hearted, 
whole-souled life should be. Not only did he sit at 
meat among publicans and sinners, and stand before the 
blind and the lame offering to make them whole ; but 
also he walked in the midst of his chosen friends, bind- 
ing up their broken, partial lives, himself the perfect 
man, the author and the finisher of their faith. He 
completes lives. He gives soul and heart abundantly in 
life. Has he not said we are to love God with all our 
minds, and all our hearts, and all our strength ? " Yes," 
some one thinks, " but how can I in my little tread-mill 
of a life, in my circumscribed sphere, put my whole soul 
into it, live with all my might ? I wish I had an oppor- 
tunity of life into which I could throw all my soul ; — 
but what am I and my little place ? I know I am not 
living with all my heart.'^ But you may ! You may, 
if you are willing to learn Jesus' secret, and to find your 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 145 

life while losing it. You may not, indeed, live with all 
your heart and might in life up to its very close in the 
ways men often imagine that they can. Some have 
reached the heights of renown, with worlds lying at their 
feet, and yet their souls have been cold and restless as 
the winds. And souls large and satisfied have been won 
in the little valleys of this world. Whether we gain 
soul from life depends not so much upon the work great 
or small which God gives us to do, as it does upon the 
willingness with which we go to it, and the spirit which 
we keep while doing it. You remember it was not he 
who gave a cup of cold water only, but he who gave it 
in the name of a disciple, of whom Jesus said, "He 
shall in no wise lose his reward." Perhaps in the very 
effort it may cost us to put our hearts into little things — 
to do common things as disciples heartily as unto the 
Lord, — may be the exercise of soul which God has 
appointed for us that thereby we may gain capacity or 
spirit for the whole service of heaven. Eight here it 
may help us to come back to our text. In your patience 
ye shall win your souls. Not many of those disciples 
to whom Jesus was then speaking became distinguished 
Christians. They had no great part to play in this 
world. All but three or four of the trs^elve are only 
names to us. But every man of them had a splendid 
chance to win soul by endurance. God gives to common 
people this opportunity of winning on earth souls large 
enough and good enough to appreciate by and by what 
heaven is. Patience may be the making of a soul. 
That regiment of men is held all the morning waiting 
under fire. They broke camp with enthusiasm enough 

10 



146 The Reality of Faith, 

to sweep them up to any line of flame. But they are 
held still through long hours. They might show 
splendid courage in action ; but the orders are to stand. 
Only to stand still under fire ! But that day of endur- 
ance is enough to make a veteran of the recruit of 
yesterday. The discipline of waiting under life's fire 
makes veteran souls. Through the habit of endurance 
God trains often his best souls. If you keep up heart 
in your life of trial, by that patience what a soul for 
God's kingdom may be won ! 

The vital truth I have been trying thus to put into 
words would become self-evident, if we could brush for 
a moment this film of sense from our spirits and see the 
souls of men as they are forming themselves in this 
world. If we could see the souls of men as they go 
about their lives here ; if we could behold how souls in 
men are living or dying ; then every word of Jesus' 
Gospel, — its awful warnings, its great benedictions, — 
would also be seen by us to be true to the life. Behold, 
there is a soul in a palace shrinking into itself ! There 
IS a soul in a small place growing capable of all heaven ! 
Yonder comes a soul full of laughter and song, but its 
own light is going out in darkness. Thither goes a soul 
trembling along one of life's hard ways of duty, and 
before it, unseen, God's angel, and after it, into the gates 
of the city, more treasures than it has ever dreamed of. 
There is a soul bending to its appointed work in the 
world, and in its humble dutifulness becoming strong in 
grace, equal at length to the companionship of the sons 
of God in their high tasks. And there, withdrawn from 
the world, in a sick-chamber, waiting quietly, almost 



Making for Ourselves Souls. 147 

alone in old age, is a soul becoming seasoned and fragrant, 
and, lo ! through suffering and waiting it has won from 
life what power to receive a whole heaven of sunny 
peace ! How diiferent life must look — how different 
what we call sometimes its strange providences must 
look — ^to the eye of one above who can see souls, and 
how they are forming for the endless life ! And our 
own souls — is this world absorbing and exhausting them, 
or by the grace of God are we transmuting all our work 
and experience of life into more soul and sweeter? My 
friends, am I not bringing to you from this word of the 
Lord a very simple yet all-suificient test for everything 
you are doing or planning in your lives ? Can I acquire 
soul by it? Be sure, any course of life which causes 
any shrinkage of soul is not right. The open Christian 
life is constant enlargement of heart. Long ago the 
Hebrew poet looked up, and saw that the soul that runs 
in the way of the Lord's commandments is enlarged. 
" Be ye also enlarged," said an Apostle, in Jesus' name. 
His Gospel does not come to you and me with a close 
system of restrictions confronting us on every hand with 
unnatural restraints. Christ does for us what Satan 
offered to do for Christ, but never had the power to do ; — 
he gives us all the kingdoms of this world, because he 
gives us receptive souls and pure hearts for all God's 
works and worlds. All things are yours, for ye are 
Christ's, and Christ is God's. You shall be disciples of 
the Divine Man. You are here for a little while to pro- 
cure for yourselves souls, and to help others win their 
souls. God's Spirit is here with you to give you hearts 
in sympathy with all Godlike things. Grieve not that 



148 The Reality of Faith. 

Holy Spirit. Beware of anything which helps kill soul. 
A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth. Acquire soul ! Let us be 
more than content with life, let us glory rather even 
in its trial and tribulation, because we may gain every 
day soul from it, — more soul and sweeter ! 



XI. 

JESUS' METHOD OF DOING GOOD. 

" But lisus :^ntnhm^ tftttr unsttnivi^s, unshtxtis an& sniii unto 
tt)tm, S5af)at xtnson ^t in jour Starts? S^i)£t]b<Jr is tusin to sk^, 
3Cf)2 JEfins an foraibm t!)«; or to sag, ErLst anlJ toalii?" — Luke 
V. 22-23. 

My sermon this morning has grown out of some 
thoughts upon life which came to me while attending 
this last week the opening of the present criminal term 
of our Superior Court. I thought here in this court- 
room are represented so many forces which go to make 
the world what it is. The honorable Court, its officers, 
and array of counsel, represent certain conservative 
forces in that complex thing which we call life. The 
idlers upon the benches with nothing better to do than 
to look on, represent certain other forces of society of 
which they are the products. And the prisoners 
arraigned for trial represent also more than their 
wretched selves ; they stand for certain forces which go 
to make life what it is. Many of those prisoners were 
boys. Their misdemeanors were their own acts for 
which they must be put to plead ; but those boys are them- 
selves also resultants of certain forces at work in human 
life. A regular docket of criminals, and a regular pro- 
portion of boys among them indicate certain forces in 
society operating with something like uniform causation. 

149 



150 The Reality of Faith. 

Some very serious inquiries are brought before us 
when we look behind persons to the forces wliich are 
weaving life, and marring, while they make, its pattern. 
There is a certain regularly recurring outcome of misery, 
want, and crime. That docket of the court stands for 
an almost constant waste in the process of human life. 
These human forces work wastefuUy. There are lost 
lives. Must such waste and loss run on forever ? The 
criminal classes indicate the worst waste of human 
forces ; but by no means all the loss of power in life. 
Not only at the bottom, but at the top, and all through 
human society, there is mal-adjustment of forces, friction, 
and consequent waste. We speak in a familiar but 
expressive phrase of the wear and tear of life. What 
shall ever restore the harmony of forces, and make life 
do perfect work ? 

The question suggested by that hour in a court-room 
was, what power shall be beforehand with these products 
of crime ? And this question once started takes wider 
scope : Is there any one reorganizing force of human 
life ? Human life is one vast problem of forces ; — is it 
only the dreamer who would labor and pray for the 
perfect adjustment of life's forces to perfect work ? Or 
do Christians mean something real when they pray, 
" Thy kingdom come ? '' Look at this wear and waste 
of life more closely. The trouble is not merely that 
there are so many loose ends of life ; but the forces 
which ought to work together and weave life harmo- 
niously after one good pattern, and under one law, are 
all in confusion. Things human do not work together 
for good. Is this all, then, which we may hope to do, — 



Jesus Method of Doing Good. 151 

to tie up with our charities a few of life's loose ends ? 
to ease a strain here, and to help life run over a diffi- 
culty there ? to stop one waste to-day, and beware of 
another point of friction to-morrow ? to run with our 
help from this want of humanity to the next, while 
nevertheless the great machine of the world goes grind- 
ing and groaning on, throwing some for a moment to the 
top, crushing others at the bottom, and leaving ruins of 
men and wrecks of homes all along its way ? I can see 
no better prospect than this — no hope for the readjust- 
ment of this complex of human forces to happier results — 
unless somewhere among the forces which are making 
history I can discover a power great enough to be the 
centre and motor of all others — the one power around 
which society can be reorganized and life harmonized 
for perfect work. 

Coming from that court-room with such thoughts in 
mind, I opened the New Testament and fell upon the 
chapter which I have read as our lesson this morning. 
There, too, I thought, in that house in Capernaum were 
represented the forces which are weaving and breaking 
human life. Some of the familiar powers of this world 
are met under that roof. We read " there were Phari- 
sees and doctors of the law sitting by, which were come 
out of every village of Galilee and Judea and Jerusa- 
lem." These were the conservators of morals and the 
law. They represented the forces of commandments, 
restraints, customs, and traditions. Then a victim of 
the palsy was let down into this group of powers. His 
helpless paralysis brings also the destructive powers of 
life tangibly into their midst. His body was a Jiving 



152 The Reality of Faith. 

image of death. Thus the forces of natural and moral 
evil were thrown together with the conservative powers 
of" Israel, and with the many mixed motives and ten- 
dencies of human nature, in that pushing multitude who 
crowded the hall, and spoiled the air, in that house in 
Capernaum. 

But in the midst of these common forces of life, 
there is present another Power such as the world has 
not seen before. Calm, self-centred, waiting his hour, 
this Power of God stands in the midst of this multitude 
of the powers of this world. The simple narrative of 
fhe Gospel — ^too simple to have been invented — describes 
the appearance of a higher force, its method of work- 
ing, its immediate result. The narrative names it the 
power of the Lord to heal with Jesus Christ. One 
other force, indeed, besides those just mentioned, comes 
in and quietly works with this healing power of the 
Lord. It is a not altogether unknown force of human 
life. It is one of the quietest and least obtrusive, but 
one of the most persistent forces of human nature. 
Kings have sought to crush it out with armies; but, 
though trampled under foot of men, it has sprung up 
again unconquered. No flames have been able to quench 
it ; no sufferings have broken its strength ; it is mightier 
than the sword ; yet it may be hidden in a woman's 
heart ; — I speak of the power of faith, invisible to the 
multitude which crowded that house in Capernaum, but 
which was revealed at once to Jesus who saw the faith 
of the men who let the sick of the palsy down through 
the roof. Such, then, are the forces of the problem of 
life,— scribes, doctors of the law, the multitude of 



Jesus Method of Doing Good. 153 

human wants crowding together, faith letting a palsied I 

man down through the roof, and One in the midst of 
whom the evangelist bears witness, " The power of the 
Lord was with him to heal." 

If we take the problem which I brought from the 
court-room back to this scene narrated in the Gospels, 
the question as to the forces of life will resolve itself for 
us directly into this inquiry : Does Jesus of Nazareth 
in the midst of that multitude, and before that palsied 
man, represent a power sufficient to reorganize humanity, 
and to bring forth from life perfect work ? Is Jesus in , 

the midst of all known human and social forces the har- 
monizing and healing power of God? If he is, we 
need no better reason for worshipping him. If the 
power to reorganize life harmoniously is with the Man 
who stood conscious of divine mastery over all the 
powers represented in that house in Capernaum, then we 
need no further reason for making a religion of his 
Gospel. 

Let me remark here that in this method of approach 
to Christ and Christianity we are coming to it in a most 
characteristic Scriptural way. For the New Testament 
conception of Christ and his Gospel is pre-eminently a 
conception of power. It is not a saving truth, but a 
saving power which has come to men in Christ. The 
Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Those 
Apostles felt the crushing might of the world-powers. 
Life to them was a wrestling with principalities and 
powers. The powers of evil were in their experience |j{ 

very real and personal. Consequently their conception 
of Christ's Gospel is formed, not in the mould of wisdom 



154 The Reality of Faith, 

or philosophy, but of power. Run over in a concord- 
ance the passages of the New Testament cited under the 
word power, and see how the original Apostolic form of 
Christianity was moulded in the experience of redemp- 
tive power. From the beginning Jesus' preaching of 
the Gospel of the kingdom was with power. The sev- 
enty received power over all hurtful things. The fare- 
well word of the risen Lord to the wondering disciples 
was : "All power is given unto me.'' The promise of 
the Holy Ghost was a Pentecost of power. The first 
martyr was known as a man full of faith and power. 
The missionary Apostle knew that his poor human 
speech w^as in the demonstration of the Spirit and of 
power. And so on through the epistles the ever-recur- 
ring note, struck with no uncertain sound, is. The Gospel 
is the power of God. This certainly is the impression 
which that man of Nazareth, who stood once in that 
throng of conflicting life-forces at Capernaum, made 
upon those who saw him, and left indelibly stamped 
upon the world, — the impression of power ; — ^the power 
of God was with him to heal. 

If we seek thus to enter into the original Apostolic 
possession of the Gospel of Christ as the power of the 
Lord with men, the narrative of Jesus' healing the sick 
of the palsy will let us at once into the method and suf- 
ficiency of Jesus' mastery over life. Consider then for 
a moment the method of Jesus' working as disclosed by 
this narrative. The first thing which he did was not 
the thing w^hich he was expected by men to do. His 
first word seemed remote from the thing needing then 
and there to be done. The friends of that palsied man 



Jesus Method of Doing Good, 155 

expected the famed miracle- worker to heal him ; and 
instead Jesus said only, " Man, thy sins are forgiven thee." 
There was a practical work to be done, a man wanting 
help. And although his friends believed that Jesus 
might restore him, he seems to forget the man's great 
physical need, and as one thinking of something else, 
and looking far away, he says, " Man, thy sins are for- 
given thee.'' Then those doctors of the law, seeing no 
sign wrought, begin to reason about Jesus' word ; and 
the more they think of it, the more improbable and far- 
fetched it seems to them, until, as they reason over it, 
they are forced by their Pharisaic logic to conclude that 
such a word from any man is nothing less than blas- 
phemy against God, "for who can forgive sins, but 
God alone?" That was not the first nor the last 
time that ecclesiastical logic has drawn a correct circle 
of reasoning by which the living Truth has been shut 
out. Jesus stood for the moment looking upon the dis- 
appointed faces of his friends, and meeting the cruel 
eyes of his enemies. He was to be the Messiah ; and a 
palsied man lay helpless before him, and he had spoken 
a far-oif, ineifectual word. Where, then, is the power for 
the mastery of life ? Must we look for another ? But 
Jesus knew which of all forces working on this earth is 
the greatest force ; and he was not self-deceived. He 
knew the higher truth which the Pharisees, who rea- 
soned when they should have learned, did not perceive. 
He knew that his word of divine forgiveness, which 
seemed remote from the very present need of that palsied 
man, and which to the Pharisees w^as idle as a breath of 
air, was nevertheless the force of forces for the healing 



156 The Reality of Faith. 

of the world. He knew how to begin his work among 
men, before any form of suffering, with a word which 
should bring down to the soul of man's need the power 
of the heart of God. The multitude looked on and 
saw the momentary failure, as it seemed, of the Christ 
of God. " But Jesus perceiving their reasonings, 
answered and said unto them. What reason ye in your 
hearts ? Whether is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven 
thee; or to say. Arise and walk?'' Which is easier? 
Which is the greater force — the love of God forgiving 
sin, or the miracle of healing? Jesus began with the 
greatest work. Jesus began by linking all his daily 
works of goodness in with the one supreme motive-force 
of goodness : all which he came to do, and which needed 
to be done in the world, he bound directly upon this 
divine motive-power of love forgiving the sin of the 
world. Notice the unmistakable contrast between Jesus' 
judgment of his own good work, and the popular 
opinion in that house in Capernaum. Which is easier? 
Jesus asks, looking round from face to face of friend 
and foe, with the smile of a gracious triumph brighten- 
ing the pity of his eye, — Which is easier ? " But that ye 
may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to 
forgive sins (he said unto him that was palsied), I say 
unto thee. Arise, and take up thy couch, and go unto 
thy house." The miracle, as it seemed to the people, 
was not the greater work which Jesus knew he was sent 
to accomplish. The physical miracle followed easily and 
naturally upon the diviner power of God's love which 
Jesus was conscious of possessing and exercising over 
the might of evil, when he said, " Man, thy sins are for- 



yesus Method of Doing Good. 157 

given thee." The people, when they saw the lesser 
work done — the miracle of healing, — not comprehend- 
ing the power of God then and there present upon the 
earth and working first the greater work of the forgive- 
ness of sin, were amazed and filled with fear, and said, 
"We have seen strange things to-day." And this 
opinion of the people must be our opinion of these 
miracles, if we do not know Jesus himself any better 
than those doctors of the law at Capernaum had learned 
Christ. We can only say of his mighty works, These 
are strange things ! — unless we have learned from Jesus 
himself what the supreme powers of this universe are ; 
unless we have learned to estimate the forces of this uni- 
verse according to Jesus' own spiritual science of them. 
Which is easier, the divine victory of love over souls 
which have freely sinned, or the working of God's heal- 
ing power down among the lower forces of things ? If 
we live and think altogether down upon the lower planes 
of natiu-e, knowing gravitation and the attractions of 
matter, but unlearned in the heart's knowledge of the 
first and higher forces of life, and ignorant as the brutes 
that perish of the primal law and supreme power of 
love, then of course all Jesus' life and work will be a 
thing incredible ; we have not gained any experience to 
which it may seem natural. We must be skeptics con- 
cerning everything supernatural until we have learned 
by heart a little of what Jesus knew of the larger and 
diviner forcas of things ; until, moved and swayed in 
our own lives by the great spiritual powers, we can 
believe also in the divine dynamics of the universe. 
The man who cannot believe in miracles may be right 



158 The Reality of Faith, 

from the level of his experience. He has taken an 
earthly plane from which to look ; and he is looking the 
wrong way, down from his own brain into the earth, and 
not up from his own free soul into the heavens towards 
the living God. He may be right from his point of 
view. We cannot, indeed, believe in mere wonders. 
We cannot believe in anything which we cannot bring 
into some relation to our experience, and under some 
law, or rational order of things. If we are unwilling to 
trust our own souls in their consciousness of spiritual 
life, we certainly can have little faith in Jesus Christ the 
Son of God. Begin by defining the whole nature of 
things so as to leave spirit and God out, and you ought 
consistently to fly in the face of history, and to deny 
everything which you cannot put together out of these 
poor, earthly materials in your dead mechanism of a 
universe. To the man, in a word, who only believes in 
the lower and worst half of himself, his body, Jesus can- 
not be the Son of man from God. I do not dispute, 
therefore, with the logic, but with the experience which 
pronounces his incarnate glory and mighty works 
incredible. But if our own hearts and souls have ever 
taught us more than our eyes can see, or our hands 
touch ; if we have once in any moment of free thought, 
or power of spiritual purpose, known ourselves to be 
more than bodies of dust, bound to the unceasing tread- 
mill of things ; if we have ever in the mastery of spirit 
over things learned that the first and final powers of this 
universe are in nature but above it, spiritual, divine, 
eternal ; then we may understand better Jesus' miracles ; 
we may look down upon them as he did from the higher 



Jesus Method of Doing Good. 159 

plane of forces upon which he lived, and see that they 
are the orderly effects of higher causes, and are no more 
miracles to the power of God, and no more violations of 
his laws of nature, than are our volitions when they 
work downwards and outwards in our interference of 
spirit with the course of things. 

You dip an oar into the water, and, lo ! a strange 
thing happens ; — the uniform course of the stream is one 
way ; and at the dip of the oar in the stream you cross 
the current, and go up stream. Nature never could have 
floated anything up stream. The course of nature for 
that palsied man was down to death. Nature never 
stops and turns back upon itself. Who, then, is this that 
works against the stream of things ? Impossible ! All 
those long river-grasses bend downwards with the cur- 
rent. They cannot turn and float the other way, unless 
the whole stream flows backwards. The person then 
who reports that he saw those grasses turning a moment 
and bending the other way, contradicts our uniform 
experience of that stream. The river may run on for- 
ever, but the miracle of a blade of grass turned against 
its current it can never produce. The logic is good, pro- 
vided the stream and the grasses are all. But a higher 
force chooses to launch itself on the river ; and in the 
free exercise of its own power it moves up against the 
stream ; lo ! the grasses bend before it, and the dip of the 
oar from above breaks the water into ripples without 
reversing the stream. Its nature is not violated by your 
boat in it. The law of its flowing simply obeys the 
higher law of your motion across it. A miracle would 
be impossible if nature had to work it. Nature is a con- 



i6o The Reality of Faith, 

tinuity of causes. It is one stream throughout. But 
who knows that God ever made nature so as to prevent 
himself from moving through it ? Does the dip into the 
water of that white bird-wing down from out the sky 
violate the law which the flowing river must obey ? No 
more would the descent of the angel of the Lord into the 
lives of men. 

We need not stumble, then, at the miracle, as the 
multitude regarded it, but which was only a lesser, 
secondary work in Jesus' estimation of it. It was per- 
fectly natural to him. Before the miracle, and greater 
than the apparent miracle, was the power of God on 
earth forgiving sin. And this greater, nay, should it 
not be called this greatest power of God,, is the all- 
sufficient power for life. It alone shall bring forth the 
new creation, and cause life at last to turn out perfect 
work. 

I cannot linger now upon the signs and evidences of 
the reorganizing efficiency of this power in life ; let me 
simply invite you to find the proof of it by observing it 
in the closest possible contact with real life. Go back 
and down until you come as close as you can to the real 
powers which make and mar life. Study, also, not in 
the books, but in the closest possible application to life 
all the healing powers which men may bring to bear upon 
life. And as in this study of real life we learn what sin 
is, and what man's first need is, then remember Jesus' 
question, " Whether is easier to say. Thy sins are forgiven 
thee ; or to say. Arise and walk ? " Learn from the heart 
of the wants of the world the divine sufficiency of Jesus' 
greater work. The first word of the Spirit calling forth 



yesics Method of Doing Good. i6i 

tlie new creation from our social chaos is the word of 
the forgiveness of sins. It is a word greater than all 
our charities, for it is the new-creative word which God 
only can speak on earth. Does this seem to you in 
your practical philanthropy a Gospel too remote from 
the woes of men ? So is the sun remote from the dead 
fields ; but the sun in the heavens is the first power of 
life on the earth. God^s method of saving the world is, 
first of all, by shining upon it. Social regeneration 
begins in the Gospel of divine forgiveness. I say this 
with those wretched prisoners behind that bar in mind ; 
with the thought before me of that mass of struggling, 
fermenting humanity heaped up to fester and to die in 
the alleys of our cities ; with some knowledge, too, of 
the emptiness of much gilded happiness, and the dead 
men's bones in those whited sepulchres of homes which 
some passing by upon the streets may envy. That word 
which Jesus first of men dared speak; which he had 
authority from the Father to speak, when they laid a 
wreck of a human form at his feet, " Man, thy sins are 
forgiven thee ; " — that is the Gospel of power for our 
world ; that is the creative word of the new and happier 
order of humanity. Spin your reforms around any 
other principle of power than this, and they will fail, or, 
at best, result only in partial good. The Gospel of the 
love of God forgiving the sin of the world is man's first 
need. Our regeneration is in the power of the Holy 
Ghost. 

Too remote, do you say, from men's wants, this word 
of Jesus, always repeated by his Church? Men and 
women want bread ; they want clothing and coal ; they 

11 



1 62 The Reality of Faith. 

want work and means ; they want rooms witli air enough 
in them to breathe ; they want recreations and rest ; they 
want a better chance at life ; they want protection from 
the cruel passions which prey upon them ; the people 
want more social justice, more honesty up and down 
through society and between all classes of men; they 
want right laws scientifically made, and executed in 
righteousness ; they want deliverance from the demons 
of demagogism, faction, and vice whose name is legion ; 
they want many immediate, necessary, and most practical 
reforms, — and the Church invites them to hear a Gospel 
preached, and to worship an unseen Saviour from sin ! 

I am only repeating what hundreds of people strug- 
gling wdth life, and smarting under grievances, are saying 
in their hearts of our churches. I am only repeating in 
the language of present wants what that throng of people 
felt in their hearts, when Jesus himself disappointed the 
multitude by letting for a moment the wretched, palsied 
man lie helpless at his feet, while he spake a remote, 
heavenly word of forgiveness. But as in that case soon 
appeared, Jesus Christ was right in the way he chose to 
begin his work, and the people were all wrong. He did 
the harder thing first, and the easier thing next. And 
the method of the Church, following Christ's, is pro- 
foundly right. It is practically true. The Gospel of 
divine forgiveness we must put first ; our benevolences 
second. Sin is first to be mastered ; then suffering is 
more easily healed. Go to the bottom of all these human 
wants of which I have just been speaking, and the begin- 
ning of them was somebody's sin. The sting of death is 
sin. Consider again those prisoners — those boy-tramps 



JesiLs Method of Doing Good. 163 

whose ' names were called in the criminal docket. I 
know not who sinned, that boy or his parents. I know 
that somebody ^s sin is come to judgment there. Walk 
down that alley of crowded misery. I know not who 
sinned, that wretched outcast, or some gentleman's son 
I may have met in a ladies' drawing room ; I do know 
that somebody's sin is the serpent which has poisoned 
that life ; and that loathsome heap of pauperism has been 
swept up and gathered from the sins of the world. I do 
not know who the sinners are ; but the sin I know ; it 
is the characteristic thing of this world. An angel flying 
unseen on some errand of God through our skies would 
know this earth not as the famed world of poetry and art, 
of science and railroads, and man's mastery over elemental 
forces, but as the world into which sin has come, and 
the world marked with the sign of the Cross. And see- 
ing all its woes and shames, such ministering spirits 
might sing. Praise be to God who has not sent us thither 
to toil in vain, to bind up one wound, while sin opens 
another; to reform one evil while sin plots another; 
to pluck one suffering child out of the fire while 
sin dra^^^s in another; to wage an endless warfare of 
merciful deeds against an endless outbreak of flaming 
passions ; to build vineyards over volcanoes ; — praises be 
to God who has taken the whole world into his love, and 
gone to the source of all its history of evil with the 
power of his forgiving grace ; — Peace on earth ! good 
will toward men ! glory to God in the highest ! 

AYe are called to live in the power of the Master. A 
real Christian is so much character-force for the healing 
of life. If you, who are still young, wish to count for 



164 The Reality of Faith. 

something in this world, you may find in the Master's 
name and Spirit the secret and source of power. You 
may be in Christ's grace forces made after the power of 
an endless life. The Christlike soul is power of God 
with man. It reigns while it serves. It finds its life 
while it loses it. 

And let us keep always in mind God's method in 
Christ of doing good. The Lord's miracle needs to be 
continued and attested in all his churches, — first the 
Gospel of forgiveness, and then the healing charity. 
Christ's w^ay of doing good is first by shining upon the 
world, — not by condemning it, but by shining out of his 
divine love upon all men. We are sent in his name 
that we, too, out of hearts made bright by the hope of 
his Gospel, may shine everywhere upon life. " Even so 
let your light shine before men, that they may see your 
good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.'' 



XII. 

THE IMPERATIVES OF JESUS. 

"But I sag unto gou." — Matt. v. 44. 

Jesus speaks in imperatives. He commands human 
nature. The sermon on the Mount is a sermon in the 
imperative mood. It is gracious, but it is imperative. 
Its blessings are commandments. Jesus reconstructs by 
his supreme personal authority the law and traditions 
of the people. It is enough for his command that he 
speaks it. " Ye have heard that it hath been said : but I 
say unto you." ^^ Verily, verily I say unto you." He 
does not argue with men ; he commands them. He speaks 
words of invitation, but his invitations have behind 
them the imperatives of truth. His word, " Come unto 
me," is both an invitation of heavenly grace and a com- 
mand of duty. His words, " Blessed are the poor in 
spirit ; " " Blessed are the pure in heart," and so on, are 
words of supreme authority as well as promises of grace. 
Jesus never speaks for himself or for his kingdom one 
apologetic word. He makes demands of righteousness 
and truth upon us. 

Recall, in the first place, the range and extent of 
Jesus' imperative speech. Jesus keeps up to his own 
superior level of command upon all occasions and before 
all men. He does not speak one moment with com- 
manding voice, and another in beseeching tones. He 

165 



1 66 The Reality of Faith, 

always commands. The occasion never comes for him 
to drop the clear, gracious imperatives of his daily 
speech, and to use such words of apology as we all at 
times must use over our work and our endeavors. For 
more than thirty years this man lived among men, but not 
even in his conversation with his chosen friends was 
there ever heard falling from his lips one syllable of 
apology for himself or his cause. Glance again over 
these Gospels, and observe with what clear and ceaseless 
consistency Jesus' speech keeps up to the great impera- 
tives of his kingdom. Like the successive strokes of a 
bell ringing out over the hills and down the valleys, 
these imperatives of Jesus sound forth across the ages : 
Repent ; believe ; Come ; Follow me ; Take up your 
cross ; Seek first the kingdom of God ; Keep my com- 
mandments. 

Men like us occasionally may assume without offense 
an imperative mood in certain relations of life, or before 
others who for the time may be dependent upon us for 
direction or support. But beyond these occasional and 
limited duties, the position of command becomes a pre- 
sumption and offense in men. We are created equal. 
Yet on all occasions, and before all men, Jesus kept his 
attitude of command, while he lost no human grace or 
benignancy by his constant and unmistakable attitude of 
authority over men. He w^ent into the temple, and 
stood among the rulers of the people as their Lord. He 
opened the Scriptures in the synagogue, and interpreted 
tlie law and the prophets as the Master even of those 
sacred rolls. He spoke with authority over Moses. 
He walked the beach of Gennesaret, and when the 



The Imperatives of yesus. 167 

people came crowding around him, he taught as one 
having authority. He talked with a wilful woman at 
Jacobs' w^ell, and she who had had seven husbands, and 
yet could carry her head high through that village in 
Samaria, finds her pride broken, and is at last humbled 
before the Stranger, who quietly told her all things which 
ever she had done. 

In the still evening a master of Israel comes to 
him ; — now surely he who through the day and among 
the people has kept up a brave show of knowledge of 
the truth, and yielded his authority to none who ques- 
tioned him, will acknowledge in private conversation 
with a master of Israel his own questionings and limit- 
ations, and the two sitting together upon the house-top 
under the stars will be but as children of the infinite 
mystery from which we are born. But hardly had the 
courteous salutation of the Rabbi been addressed to 
Jesus, when instead of the humble and half deprecating 
answ^er which would have been for any man of us the 
natural answer, clear and full upon the night-air sounds 
Jesus', Verily, verily I say unto you ! — ^to be repeated 
again as the Rabbi in astonishment asks the question of 
bewilderment. How can these things be ? and to be fol- 
lowed and enforced by the supreme commandment. Ye 
must be born again ! 

Although Jesus may maintain this constant attitude 
of command before the Jews, even before the rulers and 
chief priests, can he stand in the calm imperatives of 
his kingdom before the Roman and his power ? Pilate 
askal him, "Art thou a king then ? Jesus answered. 
Thou sayest that I am a king ! " We should like to 



1 68 The Reality of Faith. 

have seen him then ; — even the Roman saw something 
which he had never seen before in that clear eye of 
truth fixed upon him ; — Jesus looked a king ! Pilate 
would have released him. They put the crown of 
thorns upon him, and nail him to the cross. Now, while 
the people mock him, shall not his kingliness fall from 
him ? Now shall not he who has lived as Master die 
as one of the thieves between whom he is crucified? 
Nay, his kingliness never forsook him. Dying, he 
reigns. Crucified, he is the King who with one word 
of divine authority opens paradise to the over-awed peni- 
tent by his side. His last word of prayer has no human 
weakness in it ; it is a prayer of authority, as well as 
of infinite pity, the prayer of one who knows he has but 
to speak and he shall be heard ; — ^^ Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do.^' ^'And when Jesus 
had cried ^^ — not in trembling tones of our human weak- 
ness and mortality, but ^' with a loud voice^' — with voice 
even in death so commanding that the centurion standing 
by said, ^^ Certainly this was a righteous man ! ^^ — ^Svhen 
Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into 
thy hands I commend my spirit : and having said thus, 
he gave up the ghost." 

Consider, further, not only that Jesus met with his 
supreme imperative all men, and on every occasion, 
even in death, was commanding ; but also mark well the 
nature and significance of those relations of life, and 
those elements of human nature, over which Jesus quietly 
assumed and always maintained mastery. The miracles 
of Jesus are not tlie greatest of his wonderful works. 
It is a greater assumption of power to exercise authority 



The Imperatives of Jestts. 169 

over the higher principles and laws of our human nature 
than it is to claim authority over the winds and the 
waves. The miracle in the reahn of the physical will 
seem to me a secondary and lesser thing, if I can once 
allow the greater marvel of Jesus' authority over the 
human heart and its most permanent affections. If 
indeed he has authority to stand above the natural laws 
of our affections, to say to any mother before the cradle 
of her child, or to any child upon its mother's bosom, — 
I am diviner than tliis ; of such child-likeness of spirit 
is my kingdom; love me more than all; — if this 
miracle-worker has authority to enthrone himself above 
all human affections as the Lord of hearts and the king 
of souls ; — then indeed it would be an easy thing for 
him to heal the sick, or to make a great calm in the centre 
of a storm, or to raise the dead. If I must worship as 
One from above the man Avho walks in the name of 
God the streets of Capernaum, I need no longer wonder 
that a woman should feel coming to her diseased flesh a 
healing virtue from a touch upon the hem of his gar- 
ment. The lesser physical results or miracles of Jesus' 
presence are but the natural consequences which might 
be expected, if he be himself the Son of God. The 
miracle of history is not the virtue which goes forth 
from Christ along the edge and border of his life where 
it touches nature and natural sequences as he passes by ; 
but the ^lan himself in his spiritual kingliness, Jesus 
himself in his authority over the souls of men, is the 
supernatural truth of the ages. 

Observe with what calm consciousness of right Jesus 
assumes this authority which belongs to God alone over 



170 The Reality of Faith. 

human hearts. Observe how he never lowers for one 
moment his authority over souls, even when he conde- 
scends to the friendships of Bethany and the daily inti- 
macy of the twelve. The imperative of Jesus' presence 
is always felt by those nearest him, even though he veils 
it from them, and will not say unto them as yet many 
things which he sees they cannot bear. Jesus' superhu- 
man authority is most profoundly felt by those who 
know him best. To the disciples Jesus was not brother, 
not companion, not friend, or rather he was all these as 
he was more than these to them ; to Peter and John, to 
all the twelve, even to Judas who hastily betrayed him, 
Jesus was Master. What saith the Master ? What will 
the Master do ? His word ended their questionings by 
the way. His word decided their next day's journey. 
His word was always law. They followed ; he went 
before them in the way ; the disciples were amazed, yet 
still they follow^ed Jesus in the way. This supreme 
mastery over human wills and human hearts, over life's 
most sacred and commanding relationships and friend- 
ships, characterized Jesus from his boyhood to his cross. 
You have sometimes let drop the sacred i^age as you 
have read how his parents sought him and found him 
teaching in the temple, and you have wondered whether 
that strange answer to Mary was the perfect example of 
the dutifulness of childhood. Mary wondered too ; but 
recognizing already in the child Jesus something diviner 
than her mother's love and its sacred claims, she hid that 
saying of the holy One in her heart. Were he only the 
child Avith no higher authority over our human relation- 
ships beginning to lead him from his birth, then would 



The Imperatives of Jesus, 171 

that scene and that answer "be strange indeed. But even 
the child Jesus exercised authority over the relationship 
of childhood. He was more than the child whom his 
parents found. And you remember hoAV afterwards 
when some one said, "Behold, thy mother and thy 
brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee,'' 
another word of authority over life's nearest and holiest 
relationships fell at once from his lips : " But he 
answered and said unto him that told him, "Who is my 
mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched 
forth his hand toward his disciples, and said. Behold my 
mother and my brethren ! For A^hosoever shall do the 
will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my 
brother, and sister, and mother." 

You could not utter such strange words to your 
mother. They would be blasphemy upon our lips in 
our homes. They were pure, divine imperatives upon 
the blessed lips of the Christ. He could speak them 
because he is greater than all. He puts himself above 
all homes and all natural affections because in him is 
the truth of all love and the completion of all human 
relationships. We have seen him in the temple of the 
Jews casting out the money-changers, and exercising 
authority by his o^vn right in his Father's house. But 
herein is a more marvellous thing. He comes to the 
homes of men. He enters the temple of the human 
heart. And there, amid its most sacred associations, 
over its purest affections, he sets his throne, and says, I 
am Saviour and Lord. 

Thus far I have been dwelling upon the range and 
extent of the authority exercised by Jesus. We learn 



172 The Reality of Faith. 

from the Gospels that it was universal in its extent, and 
supreme in its height. No man escapes from it; and 
there is nothing in human nature which is not put 
beneath it. Before the reason, the conscience, and the 
heart of man Jesus stood declaring himself to be the 
truth, the way, and the life. 

We must needs ask one another, therefore, in the 
second place, concerning the nature or right of this 
supremacy of the Christ. Of what kind this authority 
of Jesus is we find only partially explained in the 
Gospels which set forth its power and right. We can- 
not fully comprehend it in our study of it. The 
authority of Jesus over human nature and history 
resembles the lordship of the sun over the earth ; — the 
world feels it from centre to circumference ; every fruit- 
ful field rejoices in it, and this earth would be indeed 
worthless and dark without it ; but we can only make 
guesses at the riddle of its gravitation and its light ; and 
while any child knows that it is, the wisest can only 
declare in part, in very little part, how it is. Yet 
Christian science must evade no problem of thought, 
and we have no right as Christian learners to stop think- 
ing in any direction until we can think no farther. 
Something of the nature of Jesus^ supreme authority 
we may discern. One ever-present type and illustration 
of what the Lord Jesus Christ is to this universe we 
have within us in conscience. We are commanded by 
another than ourselves within ourselves. That is con- 
science. It is ourself, yet not ourself. It is a higher 
self. It is sometliing in us, yet not of us. Philosophers 
cannot define it ; physiologists always lose it when they 



The Impei^atives of yesus. 173 

would find it iu lesser things ; but we know it. Almost 
in infancy the child learns it, — I know not whether as a 
part of the human fact of love in which it is born and 
comes gradually to know itself, or whether directly from 
the inspiration of God himself who is before and beneath 
all our human love and life ; — but, be it as a word of 
God taught through human experience, or as a word of 
God whispered anew to each soul in its own inner ear 
for God^s voice, certain it is that conscience is the best 
known fact of human life. We know something of 
what matter and body are, but we know better what 
conscience and its laws of duty are. Conscience is the 
first, and last, and constant element of our being ; and 
though we deny it, we cannot destroy it. We must rise 
and sleep, we must eat and drink, we must work and rest, 
with conscience ; and when all other things pass from us, 
and this world becomes to the dying eye the shadow 
which it is, through death, and up the steps of the judg- 
ment-throne, conscience shall go with us, our souFs first 
friend, and last judge — our condemnation or our justifi- 
cation, so long as we are living souls. 

But the conscience of man, supreme over everything 
else within us, recognizes its light and Lord in the 
Christ from God. That is the true Light which lighteth 
every man that cometli into the world. Jesus Christ is 
the incarnate conscience of humanity. His judgment is 
true. All judgment is committed unto him. Conceive 
of that other self in you — conscience ; — conceive of that 
other self in your neighbors and friends — conscience ; — 
conceive of that higher self in humanity — conscience — 
as finally and fully embodied and incarnate in the Son 



174 T^^ Reality of Faith, 

of man. In that conception of a perfect, incarnate con- 
science you have one means of understanding the 
supreme authority of Jesus Christ. Why should not 
God enter in and possess once for all the conscience of 
man ? Jesus is the final conscience of the world ; who, 
then, but he shall be the final judge ? 

To say this much, however, is by no means to com- 
prehend the Christ of these Gospels in his whole 
authority. Even conscience is not all of man's nobility. 
There is running through this life a law often broken, 
often disappearing, yet ever reappearing, and always 
blessing those who see it and trust themselves to it, even 
the law of love. Consider all love as gathered up into 
one pure soul; conceive of love as concentrating its 
divinest forces in one strong life ; conceive of love as 
perfectly embodied in one person and finally incarnate, — 
and you have another means of understanding the 
nature of the supremacy of Jesus Christ. His kingdom 
is the reign of love. And as conscience finds in love 
the fulfillment of its law, so the glory of Sinai passes into 
the glory of the cross. 

Yet this is not all of the truth of Jesus' person and 
supremacy as we see it reflected in these Gospels. Such 
are the human types of what he is ; conscience and love 
are the human realities by which we may approach his 
divinity. Were Jesus only man's conscience in its per- 
fect integrity, were he only man's power of love in its 
complete realization, he would be worthy of our follow- 
ing as Master and Lord. But he is more. The disci- 
ples evidently believed him to be more. His work in 
history proclaims him to be more. We leave always 



The Imperatives of yesus, 175 

something out of the impression of the Christ upon 
man, and do not find the one solution of all his mighty 
works, unless we believe that Jesus stood for more than 
our perfect conscience, and represented upon this earth 
more than the concentrated and absolutely pure love of 
the heart of our humanity. " I and my Father," he 






God. He represented in his own Person our God. He 
was to our human nature the revelation of God. We 
are to know in him what God who made the world is ; 
what God in eternity thinks ; how God beyond the stars 
regards us, — our lives, our sorrows, our graves; — as 
Jesus himself said, we are to know the Father, as we see 
him. " Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
hast thou not known me, Philip ? He that hath seen 
me hath seen the Father." 

And yet the more human thought which we have 
just entertained shall be still our best help as we worship 
before this divine authority of the person of Jesus 
Christ. For we indeed know nothing of the metaphy- 
sics of deity. But we may and do have some moral 
knowledge of God in Christ. We have confessed before 
Christ that he is the authority of conscience, he is con- 
science itself. And now we make haste to add, he is 
not our human conscience merely ; he is the righteous- 
ness of God with man. He is in his own person the 
express image of God's eternal righteousness. Behold 
the righteousness of God in Christ's life and death ! 
Let the angels look down and adore it ; let the world 
bow before it and confess it ! He is God's righteousness 
condemning the sin of the world, and submitting even 



176 The Reality of Faith. 

to death because of it. He is the incarnate conscience 
of God. And God is love ; Christy then, is the eternal 
love in which the worlds were created and the morninsc 
stars rejoiced, entering into our history to be with us to 
its end, stooping to our sorrows, bearing our burdens, 
suffering in our stead. Christ is incarnate love — God's 
own infinite and eternal love found in fashion as a man, 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities. 

Such is the authority of Jesus Christ over human 
consciences and human hearts. He speaks from God to 
man. He is God with man. He is the revelation of 
God in human nature. " Verily, verily I say unto thee, 
We speak that we do know, and bear witness of that we 
have seen. And no man hath ascended into heaven, but 
he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man 
which is in heaven.'^ ^^ Before Abraham was, I am." 

And what man or woman of us is there here who 
knows enough to contradict Jesus Christ ? Who of us 
has learned from our own knowledge of nature's shad- 
ows ever flitting before our eyes, or from our own con- 
sciences mixed with sins, or from our own hearts which 
have not been from infancy always unselfish and pure as 
heaven, — who of us has learned anything to warrant us 
in setting up our thought of life against Jesus' thought 
of it ? our desire for happiness against the blessings of 
Jesus' Gospel ? our plan for immortality against Jesus' 
revelations of the way of eternal life ? Who of us has 
authority to contradict the Master of the disciples, the 
Christ of the Gospels, the Lord of history, the Son of 
the Father, the Creator of the World, the Judge of all? 

We may bring our questionings and our doubts to him. 



The Imperatives of Jesus. 177 

We may lay our sciences before his wisdom of God. 
We may say in his discipleship, Lord, we do not under- 
stand ; the night is dark ; whither thou goest we know 
not. We may wait in his presence for more light. If 
the child may run with its childish questioning to an 
earthly parent, I am sure we can bring all our foolish 
knowledge of things to his presence, and hope some day 
for the full answer that shall make all plain. But first 
of all and above all we should bring obedience. He 
stands as Master at the crossing of the ways of our 
lives. The decision of discipleship is the first duty 
before the divine authority of Jesus Christ. My friends, 
we need to lay our souls bare of all delusions in that 
presence. Christ does command us in the name of 
God. He speaks to us in the imperative mood. His 
Gospel is an immediate and constant demand upon 
human nature. He \vill not receive honor from men. 
God in heaven does not need our worship ; and God 
in Christ, and in his work of Christianity on earth, 
does not need the patronage of our poor lives. Jesus 
Christ in his Church can do without us better than 
we can do without him in his Church. God who 
created the worlds has made his moral creatures capa- 
ble of worshipping him, and he permits them in view 
of his glory and perfections to enlarge their hearts 
in his worship ; but he needs our incense of praise 
no more than the sun in the sky needs the fragrance 
of the valleys. Yet all things that have life must 
rejoice in its shining. We need to offer our hearts to 
him. Jesus Christ in the name of the Father, repre- 
senting all his gracious Godhead, goes before his Church, 

12 



178 The Reality of Faith. 

and is establishing on earth his kingdom in righteous- 
ness. We may own the authority of divine righteous- 
ness and love incarnate, if we please ; we may find our 
lives, as we never found them or can find them in the 
world, in his kingdom if we will ; but God in Christ on 
earth can do without us and accomplish all his work of 
grace ; and God above does not need a single one of us 
in order to fill his heaven full of happy love. It is all 
condescension and free grace on his part to open the 
door for such as we, and to give us room among the just. 
And do we not all of us need to be most thoroughly 
commanded by something higher and better than our- 
selves ? We go hither and thither, we make no perma- 
nent gain of life, we fall from our own possibilities, and 
lose worth and heart, unless we are commanded to our 
inmost souls by something greater and better than we ; 
unless in some single and supreme devotion we step forth 
like princes to our high calling, and pursue life with 
the steady tread of those who go forth to conquer. Oh ! 
we must first be commanded, body, and soul, and spirit, 
in order that we may reign upon thrones forever. We 
must obey that we may become kingly. We are all 
alike in this first necessity of our finite being ; men and 
women, all of us, are but as the brutes that perish, until 
we see something that commands us, and we arise, and 
follow it like a star. You, young men and women, be 
sure you cannot find your lives until you lose them in 
something that is as a worship to your souls. Idle, idle, 
is it for any of us to seek life in aimlessness and disobedi- 
ence to the heavenly vision. Life is nothing without 
the power and purpose of conscience and love in it. 



The Imperatives of Jesus. 179 

We are no better than the leaves that fade and are blown 
about by the winds of heaven, unless we gain our own 
souls through obedience to something worthy of all our 
minds and all our hearts and all our strength. Behold ! 
the man ! Behold your King ! Behold God manifest 
in the flesh ! Hear his commanding word ! His bless- 
ing for you and me is in the imperative duty of disciple- 
ship. Leave all, and follow me. 



XIII. 

METHODS OF LIVING. 

" Enb fit satlj tinto fi)tm, ^t an from ifmatlb I 3E am from atobt : gt 
art of ttis ioorllbf; I am not of i^is toorI&." — ^John viii. 23. 

Theee are three methods of living in this world ; we 
may live from beneath, or from within ourselves, or 
from above. I do not mean to say that men and women 
are divided into three distinct classes according to these 
three definite methods of life. We none of us do live 
consistently in this world after one single method of 
life. There has been but one self-consistent man in 
human history. Jesus' life followed but one method 
throughout. His character, like the coat which the 
soldiers divided, was without seam, woven from the top 
throughout. 

But no other man is either wholly good, or consist- 
ently bad. What human character among men has ever 
crystallized according to one principle and law, without 
break or blemish ? God's goodness makes it hard even 
for the wicked man to be consistently and always earthly, 
sensual, and devilish. And the sin of the world is dust 
and stain upon the garments of those who would journey 
as pilgrims and strangers here into that better country. 
" Not as though I had already attained, either were already 
perfect,'' is the confession even of the inspired and great- 
hearted apostle. Hence I do not invite you to look in 
180 



Methods of Living. i8i 

this confused world for examples formed in thorough 
consistency with either of these three methods of life. 
I do ask you to look upon life as it lies before us, 
and to discover in it these three distinct principles or 
laws of the formation or crystallization of human char- 
acters; to consider whether there are really any other 
methods by which we may live than just these three ; 
and then studying these methods as thoroughly as you 
can in their vital truths, forces, and practical effects, to 
make conscious and deliberate choice between them. 

I need only distinguish, however, the first mentioned 
method of life from beneath. We can easily recognize 
it, or any temptation in our own thoughts from its bot- 
tomless pit. The world has received Christian education 
enough to lead it publicly and before men at least to 
repudiate the method of the devil in life; and even 
though many still cheat and steal, and bear false witness, 
and live for the gratification of their own lusts, they will 
not in the nominally Christian world be so bold as to 
follow openly their evil gods, build temples like the 
heathen to the idols of their own passions, or willingly 
acknowledge that in their grasping, intemperance, vices, 
and defalcations, they are doing the deeds of their father 
the devil. Christianity has, at least, dethroned Satan 
from open public recognition, if it has not banished the 
demons of private life. 

The second method of life just mentioned is a very 
common one, and it is good so far as it goes. It contains 
much truth, and leads to many honorable works. It is 
the effort to live as a human being may best live in the 
powers of his own reason, and out of the motives of his 



1 82 The Reality of Faith. 

own heart. Not a few desire honestly and honorably to 
make the most of themselves and their circumstances, 
but without seeking or finding any help from above. 
Religion seems to them something distant and dark ; they 
seek to answer by their own efforts their own prayer of 
life, and to create, by such wisdom as they can master, 
their own providences in the world. Young men see 
characters which have rounded out into much human 
robustness and grace without a confessed religious faith ; 
and they think that a method of life sufficient for a 
strong manhood may be found in their own reasons and 
wills without religious consecration, or the prayer of 
faith ever at the heart of life. The motive-powers for 
life they would find, according to this human method of 
it, not in any hopes or fears of the hereafter, nor even 
in any lofty faiths in things unseen and eternal ; but in 
their own admiration for whatsoever things are right 
and of good report, in their own manly love, as they 
expect to maintain it, of the good and the true. I do 
not say that all such persons consciously and thought- 
ftilly reduce thus their lives to their real principle or 
method, for one great trouble with us all is that we are 
too content to drift along with the general current of life 
around us, and do not determine thoughtfully the course 
we are following. This method, however, whether con- 
sciously or unconsciously pursued, is a common method 
of life in Christian lands. And let us cheerfully admit 
that it is good so far as it reaches. Life committed in a 
general way to truth and goodness may drift in happy 
directions. Persons whose idea of life is to develop 
themselves to the utmost of their own powers and oppor- 



Methods of Living. 183 

tunities, to make the most and the best of their lives, 
often reach admirable results. Our Christian faith need 
not make us color-blind to natural virtues. A thoroughly- 
human life may be a ripe, rich thing. We like some- 
times the flavor of it better than the harsh and crabbed 
virtue which may be the first-fruits of some life of deeper 
conscientiousness in its early exposure in a climate of 
stern religious beliefs. Only the former may already 
have reached its full, earthly ripeness, while the latter is 
the still bitter bud of some sweet, heavenly fruition. 

Having acknowledged thus the fair fruits which we 
find growing sometimes upon this human, non-religious 
principle of living, if we turn now to the New Testa- 
ment, we meet a difficulty in our text. The Scripture 
apparently fails to recognize this second, intermediate 
method of living. Yet Jesus certainly must have looked 
out upon life with as quick an appreciation of anything 
honest and fair in it as any of us can ever feel, and was 
he not always ready to see the good in men even where 
we are not quick to see it? He found the man worth 
saving even in the publican and sinner. But when he 
lays bare the principles of character ; when he reduces 
human lives to their ultimate methods ; he does not say 
there are three ways in which men live, — the way of sin 
from beneath, the w^ay of goodness growing from within 
and blossoming by its own virtue into perfection, — ^and 
also the way of religion, or of goodness shining into us 
and through us from heaven. Jesus leaves out of his 
view of life altogether the middle way. He said, as he 
taught in the temple, " Whither I go, ye cannot come,'' 
and when the Jews wondered what he meant, he pointed 



184 The Reality of Faith. 

out with instantaneous decision two radically different 
courses of life which, because opposite, could never lead 
those who followed them into the same place. "And he 
said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from 
above : ye are of this world ; I am not of this world." 
Perhaps, however, it may be said, Jesus in this text 
meant simply to oppose the falsehood which was drag- 
ging down the life of the Jcavs; and in some other 
passage he may have recognized and not condemned a 
method of life which certainly would not yield to the 
lower motives even though it does not profess to rise to 
the higher. But where in Jesus' conversation will you 
find recognized more than two fundamental principles 
and tendencies of life, — \h.^ one of this world and tend- 
ing towards that which is beneath ; and the other, like 
his own higher life, not of this world, and rising toward 
that which is above ? The last written of the Apostolic 
epistles, which reveal the mind of Jesus as it was reflected 
in that disciple who leaned upon his bosom, almost 
startle us by the vividness of the constant contrast which 
they present between two methods and two states of life, — 
the one begotten of God, and confessing the Christ ; the 
other having the spirit of anti-Christ, and not of God ; — 
tlie one is light, love, and truth; the other is death, 
darkness, and a lie. 

You see, then, the difficulty. When we close the 
Bible and look out candidly upon life, we observe a great 
deal of lovableness and goodness in the world growing 
apparently out of men's own consciences and hearts, with- 
out any special religious vitality in it. We cannot say, 
indeed, that there may not be some unconfessed secret of 



Methods of Living. 185 

God in it. I believe there is something from God in all 
human goodness. We observe, however, a way of living 
which we must recognize as a natural, human, manner 
of life, a life proceeding from man's own best nature, 
which method we do not find admitted when we open 
again the Xew Testament. One of \xsO consequences, 
therefore, must be true : either human life is broader than 
the Gospel and cannot be wholly contained in it, or else 
the Gospel goes deeper than we have looked, and judges 
human nature, not by its present appearance or imme- 
diate wants, but by its real necessities and its final con- 
ditions. 

This brings us, then, I submit, to a fair question which 
should not be evaded by any of us; — which of these 
statements just put forth is true ? The Bible says there 
are two ways of life — one from God and unto God, the 
other of this world and unto death. Human experience 
says there is also a third possible way — a mid-way of 
life, neither diabolical nor saintly — neither down in the 
depths of sin, nor up on some height with God ; — and 
this midway of life seems to some to be the nearest and 
the easiest to follow in our present ignorance and scep- 
ticisms. I think I have stated the matter fairly and 
fully, and as it exists in the minds of many. They take 
the intermediate life ; or, at least, without any choice, or 
much thought, they find themselves in this midway of 
life, and are content for the present to follow it. 

I wish to make the follomng observ^ations upon 
this fact that two ways of life only are marked out in 
the Gospel, while a thuxl way seems to be found in 
human experience. We should remember that Jesus in 



1 86 The Reality of Faith, 

his conversation with men was in the habit of going 
beyond all that is temporary and transient in human 
nature and conduct, and that his judgments of men and 
their ways of conducting themselves have reference to 
the radical principles and final issues of things. He has 
told us that he did not come to judge. " And yet if I 
judge, my judgment is true.^' Jesus judges life as one 
looking back upon it from beyond the years ; he speaks 
to human nature as one seeing into the eternal principles 
and necessities of things. When Jesus, therefore, dis- 
tinguishes between two opposite methods of life only, 
while human experience shows us a third way along 
which men are walking comfortably, and, so far as we 
can follow them, often safely, without slipping down to 
the bottom, or climbing either any difficult height ; — 
then the question arises whether life can always go on, 
whether it can go on much farther than we can now see, 
in this half-way fashion? The question between the 
Gospel with its two ways, and human nature with its 
third way, reduces itself to this : Is not this interme- 
diate way — this middle method between heaven above 
and hell below — a path which we should reasonably 
expect must come somewhere to a break, when he who 
would follow it further will be compelled to scale the 
height, or plunge into the abyss ? Is this method of life 
at best but a temporary or provisional method ? And 
if this be so, can it now be justified as a necessary or 
reasonable expedient for a life ? 

A man may say : '^ I admit that I must probably at 
some time take God into my account of life, and look 
eternity in the face ; sometime, I suppose, I shall reach 



Methods of Living. 187 

a break in my path where I must stop short and go up 
or down ; but I have not gone so far as that yet ; I have 
the ever present actuality of this world to deal with 
now ; — that meets me in my office, and knocks at my 
door, and compels me to work for my living ; I must 
do the best I can with what is at hand; when these 
unseen things shall come in sight, when God shall be a 
visible fact above my horizon, then I shall also take 
thought of God and eternity. Meanwhile I accept the 
middle way, as you call it, as a present reasonable expe- 
dient, or provisional working-plan of my life." 

Putting, accordingly, all other considerations for the 
moment one side, let us take this method on its own 
grounds, and consider well whether it is the best temporary, 
or even a necessary provisional method for a man's life. 
It is a great presumption at the outset against it that it is 
an expedient, and cannot possibly be the full, final method 
of an immortal soul. We certainly want, if we can, to 
strike now into a way of life which we can follow across 
all earthly events on and on forever. The Epicurean 
who says. Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die, is, 
at least, consistent in his self-stultification. He proceeds 
consistently to rob himself of soul and spirit, and to be 
nothing to-day but a satiated body which shall die 
to-morrow. But to say to Satan, Get thee behind me ! 
and not at the same moment to pray with the Christ, Our 
Father which art in heaven, puts a man at this disad- 
vantage : he would cast out evil, and makes a struggle for 
his own soul, while he does not bring in any higher power 
to his life, and leaves out that hope of immortality and 
that love of the divinest things which are the inspiration 



1 88 The Reality of Faith. 

of a soul in its struggle for liberty. If it were necessary 
for us to do this, and simply with main force to hold on 
to our own bare conviction of truth and right without 
any sense of spiritual deathlessness in our hearts, and 
without any assurance of faith in the living God, or 
prayer for victory over the world to one who can help 
us overcome it ; — ^then, indeed, this provisional method, 
this temporary expedient of self-preservation from evil, 
would be our duty, and alas ! the whole duty of man. 
But it certainly will be a very serious disadvantage to 
your plan of life, if that plan must be held subject to 
death, and you expect to have to drop it entirely in the 
grave. As thinking, acting beings we want to plan our 
lives for ages, not for years. A purpose over which 
death is lord, is not a purpose of life sufficient for the 
spirit of a man. And who of us expects to live one 
single day after death without finding ourselves obliged 
to take God, and the whole kingdom of righteousness, 
into our account of life ? " Do you expect to be here 
next year,'^ some one, it is said, asked of Rufus Choate 
towards the end of his life. " Yes," replied the great 
advocate, " I expect to be here next year, and a hundred 
years, and a thousand years hence." Such is the expect- 
ation of the spirit of a man. " The earnest expectation 
of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of 
God." Let the purpose of life then equal the expectation 
of man's spirit. That is not a sufficient method of a life 
which does not reach forward at least a hundred, a 
thousand years hence. Put the dilemma in all its sharp- 
ness. If I am nothing but an animal which perishes, 
then I have no use for religion. Why should a brute 



Methods of Living. 189 

take counsel of a dream of spirit — of our strange dreams 
of things glorious or terrific, after it shall be nothing 
but dust? But could a mere brute have such human 
dreams of the spirit ? If in any moments of my present 
existence I am conscious of a certain sense of spiritual 
deathlessness, am I not already living in inner contact 
with unseen things, Avhich some day may be the visible 
outward reality of God round about me? It is only 
then a question of time for me when I must have to do 
with the revealed God ; when I must have everything 
to do with religion. I cannot live fifty, a hundred, a 
thousand years hence still drifting on in unconcern about 
the greatest and final realities of this universe. 

Let me not seek in the name of the Man of Truth to 
lead any one of you a step in life beyond the truth upon 
which you may stand. Some will willingly admit that 
it is a comparative disadvantage not to be able to take 
up their lives every morning afresh in a religious faith, 
and even wish they could believe as their mothers have 
trusted God, and in that faith been strong and glad ; — 
but they say, " I must build my life up upon known 
facts, and of truths which experience can substantiate." 
So be it. Give me no dream of fountains when my soul 
is athirst for the living God ! Let me not see painted 
over the altar of the Church a picture of a feast of angels, 
when I hunger for the bread of life ! Give me no make- 
believes for life ! Give me positive facts to build into 
the substantial arch of a life ! But if I can find the key- 
stone which shall make all complete, let me not be con- 
tent to leave it untouched, not put in its place in my life, 
because life may be carried so high without it, and the 



190 The Reality of Faith, 

temporary scaffolding may hold all in place for the 
present. The only question for us is whether religion, 
whether the Gospel of Christ, does not bring to our hands 
the facts which are needed to make life entire ? If so, 
we ought at once to use them. Is faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ the key-stone which completes all and 
secures all, and that with no temporary scaffolding of 
our construction, but with the righteousness of God ? 

It might be enough for my reasoning at this point 
simply to ask those of you who have been trying to live 
out your own lives honorably in this world without 
religion, to search deeply the living Scriptures of your 
OAvn hearts, and to study the fresh daily Scriptures too 
of providence in this world, and to discover for your- 
selves whether there are not larger, higher, and diviner 
facts in present things than you can put under a micro- 
scope, or bring within the field of a telescope, or under- 
stand in any conceivable earthly mechanics of things. 
I might ask you to read me the secret of God in the 
grass beneath your feet, or to interpret the laws of reason 
in the primal motions of the heavens above. Nay, I 
might ask you to explain your own thought in which, as 
in a larger element, the heavens and the earth are con- 
tained. The present fact of the living God — where in 
this round of nature is it not pressed in upon our 
reason ? in what passing phenomenon before our eyes is 
not the omnipresent mystery of God very near us? 
Feel your own pulse-beatings, and believe in the living 
God! You cannot explain whence came that pulsing 
life of yours unless you do. 

And besides these present premonitions of God in the 



Methods of Living, 191 

sou], and these spiritual workings and prophecies of 
things amid which we live every day, there are other 
facts which one should take into his purpose of Kfe, if 
he is to have a complete method of living. There is a 
whole order and range of divine facts in the world 
which we call Christianity. They are as positive facts 
of history as the Rocky Mountains are facts of geogra- 
phy. And one might as reasonably attempt to engineer 
a railroad across a continent to the Golden Gate without 
taking into account the Rocky Mountains, as seek to 
stretch a purpose across this life without taking into his 
plan the whole range of exalted facts which we call 
Christianity. 

I suppose if a man had begun in Mexico and trav- 
elled northwards for hundreds of miles following the 
mountain chain, he could not then easily be convinced 
by any philosopher reasoning in his study, that the high 
passes through which his path had wound, and the 
mighty peaks up to which he had gazed, were only 
stories of the travellers, or battlements of clouds mis- 
taken for realities. And I suppose if any one of us had 
been born in that same year when Jesus was born on 
earth, and had lived on and on from age to age, and had 
followed for centuries along its winding way the progress 
of the Gospel ; had seen one after another the characters 
it has elevated into heavenly light, and observed the one 
constant law of formation which runs on from the 
beginning throughout this new epoch of the world's 
history ; — such a traveller down through Christian his- 
tory could not easily be persuaded by any fine reasoning 
that Christianity in its continuous order and all its 



192 The Reality of Faith. 

massive facts is a myth — a vision of Paul — a dream of 
John — a cloud-land of mistaken faith ! Christianity in 
its great ranges of truth and its continuous exaltation of 
humanity, is line fact with which the modern world and 
our life have to deal. Christianity is a divine archi- 
tecture of history which cannot be explained merely as 
a work of men's hands. 

From all these mighty facts let me now specify but 
these two. The Person of Christ is the central fact. 
Pilate did not know what to do with it — ^that fact of the 
Lord before him — and he turned coward under the eye 
of the King of men, and would wash his hands of his 
blood. The world cannot evade its responsibility before 
the divine fact of Jesus' personality. He looks calmly 
down upon all the generations, and each must crucify 
him afresh, or confess him. He stands before the judg- 
ment-throne of every soul to whom his Gospel is 
preached, and the final question of our lives — whether 
we will or no — becomes this sole and single question ; — 
What shall I do with this Jesus which is called Christ ? 

The other fact, of which I speak, is the power of the 
Holy Ghost in the lives of men. The Spirit of God 
has always been with the world, but since Christ finished 
his work the Holy Spirit has been with men, and in the 
lives of men, as never before so intimately, so power- 
fully, and in such helpfulness and grace. " Oh ! now," 
some one says, "you are in the air again with your 
sermon, and not standing on the firm ground of facts." 
Possibly we are in the air, with such faith, above the 
levels of the street at least, and the din of the world. 
But we have not lost firm footing upon the facts of 



Methods of Living. 193 

experience when we say, We believe in the Holy Ghost. 
We are simply standing upon a high yet firm range of 
facts which run straight through Christian history, 
when we rest upon the truth of the Holy Ghost. There 
are experiences of men and women called to be saints 
which are radiant with light from above. There is in 
our lives a power which is greater than we. I envy not 
the heart nor the intellect of that man who has never 
had more in his own life and in his own thought than 
he can explain by saying, " That is my own work ; that 
is my o"\\Ti creation ; I devised for myself that aspira- 
tion ; I made that instinctive prayer ; I manufactured 
that great idea ; I painted upon my own soul that vision 
of better things ; I have received only what I have 
given myself; I have never seen or followed one ray of 
light that fell upon my path from above." Christian 
experience is full of the witness of Spirit to spirit — the 
witness which the apostles recognized of the Spirit of 
God to our spirits that we are the sons of God. The 
Catholic Church universal, from the ancient times until 
now, confesses : " We believe in the Holy Ghost ; '' — and 
if in tliis faith we have been confessing to an unreality 
and a shadow, then equally the confession of the Church 
to duty, to purity, to moral heroism, to righteousness, to 
its charities and its homes, is a delusion and a dream ; 
for all these triumphs of godliness in the world are the 
signs and the evidences, the issues and results, of this 
its first and supreme confession : We believe in Jesus 
Christ our Lord, and in the Holy Ghost. 

We must allow that a provisional way of living is 
justifiable only upon the supposition that it is necessary, 

13 



194 ^^^ Reality of Faith, 

or that we can do no better. One may live as well as he 
can in a tent, provided there is no material at hand of 
which he may build a house. One may camp out under 
a merely moral theory of life, provided a religious home 
be an impossibility. But there are materials sound and 
ample for a Christian home for life. There are divine 
facts enough all about us in this world to whose shelter 
we can go, and within which we may live better, happier 
lives. The Church of Christ is a home of souls. 
There are far too many men and women camping out 
under insufficient ideas of life just outside our churches — 
and all the while the door is open, — all things are now 
ready, and yet there is room ! 

I want to leave in your thought one or two of the 
many considerations which combine to show the com- 
pleteness of the Christian method of living, and the 
comparative incompleteness of even the best method of 
life which is not clearly and consciously Christian. 

The Christian method is life from above. Christ 
finds the child that was lost, and sets him in the midst 
of the divine Fatherhood. Christ's Spirit received in 
the world is the power of the divine love beating at the 
heart of all earthly want and sorrow and sin. The 
Christian life, the life formed after this Christian method, 
is the open, large, out-of-door life of the soul ; the life 
not shut in to itself, but looking out upon all realities, 
and open to the whole day of God. "Not of our- 
selves ; " — so the first Christians said, and so we con- 
fess ; — " not of ourselves ; it is the gift of God.'' 

And, finally, to leave all else unsaid, this Christlike 
method of life shows its completeness, I might say its 



Methods of Living, 195 

perfect naturalness, in this respect that it does tend more 
and more to harmonize everything in us and around us ; 
and the growing harmony of life is the sure proof that 
the method cannot be wrong. Let any man try to live 
in the principle and power of Jesus Christ, and he will 
find what? — struggles often with temptation? strife 
sometimes hard with himself and the world? Yes, 
surely, if he would live as an honest Christian man. 
But he will know that he does not toil as a slave in this 
world which holds its creatures as the Eoman galleys 
did the captive slaves upon the benches ; he knows that 
in all the struggle of his life he is the Lord's freeman, 
and when his course shall be over he looks for the 
crown of life which the Lord shall give. He will find, 
too, a peace such as the world cannot give at the centre 
of all life's storm, a peace like the rest of heaven around 
all this world's ambitions and cares. Not growing dis- 
cord, which betrays a method that is wrong, but growing 
peace, which shows that the method of life is right, is 
the world's experience of Christianity. 

If we then would live aright, we must seek to be in 
right relations or harmony with all truths, all facts, and 
all realities in this world or the world to come. Life is 
imperfect unless it be thus a perfect reconciliation. Life, 
however noble, useful, or beautiful, is manifestly incom- 
plete, unless it seeks for and finds at last perfect recon- 
ciliation with earth and heaven, and all things which are 
therein. We must be at one with ourselves ; at one 
with nature and all its laws ; at one with all spirits of 
good ; at one with all celestial dominions and powers ; 
in a single word which includes all, we must be at one 



196 The Reality of Faith. 

with God, before we can begin to be complete, before 
ever we can gain the royal, true, eternal life. 

This is the life which Jesus Christ brings within the 
reach of the child's prayer. And every man must 
receive it as a little child from God. And now is the 
accepted time, and now is the day of salvation. 



XIV. 

THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE. 

•'^or t!)£ loht of Ci^rist wnstrainct][) us."— 2 Cor. v. 14. 

Thus the great missionary apostle takes us into the 
secret of his enthusiasm in spreading the glad tidings 
abroad among the Gentiles. The love of Christ beats 
always at the heart of true missionary life. 

The epistle in which this missionary motive is 
announced bears the stamp of St. PauPs manhood. He 
was at that time throwing himself into the great warfare 
of his life. He was in the thick of the storm of his 
grand battle for the law of liberty in the grace of Christ. 
The churches were filled with misrepresentations of his 
work ; he saw suspicion in the eyes of those whom he 
would lead to greater Christian victories ; and while he 
was uplifting the sign of the Cross in triumph among 
the Gentiles, some reactionary spirits, stirred up by men 
with letters from the brethren in Jerusalem, were denying 
his right to preach as an apostle even among churches in 
which he had been called of the Lord to minister. 

In this chapter Paul rises above all this clamor and 
gainsaying, beyond the din of party disputings, up to 
the pure source and inspiration of his missionary enthu- 
siasm ; — " For the love of Christ constraineth us." He 
who but yesterday was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, now 
judges that "one died for all, therefore all died;" — 

197 



198 The Reality of Faith. 

the atonement is for the whole world, and the Gentiles 
should know what a blessing for all nations God has 
given in his Son; — "and he died for all, that they 
which live should no longer live unto themselves, but 
unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.'' 
Men everywhere are "no longer to live unto them- 
selves;" we shall have a new world and a happier, 
when this Gospel of the new law of life shall be 
preached far and wide, and all nations shall be taught 
that henceforth men are " no longer to live unto them- 
selves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose 
again." This large, Christian grace is too great a boon 
from heaven for the disciples in Judea to be content to 
keep it to themselves ; this blessing is too ample and 
universal in its design for them to be willing to see it 
confined witliin their own churches; they must speak 
everywhere the things which they have seen and know ; 
it is plain as noon-day that God means his gift in Christ 
for the whole world. Let all men have it ; behold, now 
is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation for 
the Gentiles ! So to the chief apostle " everything is 
urgent ; " and in journeyings often he makes haste from 
city to city, constrained by the love of Christ for all 
men, and feeling that a woe is upon him if he preaches 
not the Gospel. At Corinth, at Athens, at Kome, in all 
the centres of Pagan life, he sees, beneath the glitter and 
the gayety, the hollowness and wretchedness of a world 
whose strength is eaten out by its own lusts. The fear- 
ful picture still remains in the epistle to the Romans 
which the missionary apostle drew of the uncleanness 
and unnatural woes of the world dead in sin through 



The Missionary Motive. 199 

which he hastened to carry the life-giving Gospel of the 
Lord. This world in all its sinfulness and suffering he 
beholds, also, in the transfiguring light of the Christian's 
faith. For Christ has died for all ; a new law of life, 
having in it the power of a new creation, has been made 
known in Christ : " Wherefore we henceforth know no 
man after the flesh." The missionary apostle can look 
upon the most sunken Corinthian to whom he preaches 
Christ in the glorifying hope of the spiritual renewal of 
human nature through the Gospel ; he need know the 
most abandoned man no longer after his fallen nature 
and grossness only, but after a higher possibility of the 
Spirit. " Even though we have known Christ after the 
flesh, yet now we know Mm so no more." All men, 
even the blessed Master himself, are to be known by his 
apostles henceforth after the Spirit. The man Jesus has 
vanished from earth ; but the presence of the Spirit of 
Christ is for all places and for all men. There are 
points in the midst of the thick pagan darkness begin- 
ning to shine with this light from heaven ; the whole 
world, to which the Gospel is to be preached, shall in 
time be renewed by its power. " Therefore if any man 
be in Christ, he is a new creature : old things are passed 
away ; behold, all things are become new." The Chris- 
tian is a new man in a new world. He is a changed 
man changing the world around him. In the light and 
hope of his faith all things are become new. 

Still the missionary of the cross lifts up his eyes to 
behold this vision of apostolic faith; — old things are 
passed away : behold, all things are become new, to the 
glad faith of the Christian hero who is constrained in 



200 The Reality of Faith. 

the midst of heathen darkness and want to preach the 
Gospel of renewing grace by the love of Christ. Inspi- 
ration enough for him in his devoted work is faith's 
happy vision of the new creation ! He needs not to be 
pressed to his self-denials by fear lest God's Christian 
providence towards his lost children shall finally fail of 
all gracious opportunity unless he can preach Christ 
instantly to millions who are dying without knowledge 
of the Gospel ; he is constrained by the love of Christ 
to find his life in doing daily the Master's work among 
the poor, the ignorant, and the forsaken, for w^hom 
Christ lived and died. 

There was a theological opinion prevalent among the 
first Christians which might have cooled, we should 
think, their missionary ardor. From some things Paul 
had said, quite incidentally perhaps, to the Thessalonians, 
many were led to entertain the thought that the Lord 
might come in their own generation. It is not improba- 
ble that Paul at first may have shared this not unnatural 
expectation. Although he may have thought this opin- 
ion concerning the Lord's speedy coming a not improba- 
ble opinion, he does not seem, however, at any time to 
have taught it as a dogma of his faith. It was not 
regarded as a thing incredible among some of his con- 
verts that at the break of any morning there might be 
heard across the valleys and over the sea the sound of 
the last trumpet ; or in the peace of any evening the 
form of the Son of man might be seen coming upon the 
clouds of heaven in his glory. This expectation seems 
to have misled some believers into idle waiting and use- 
less lives. And if the Lord might be expected to come 



The Missionary Motive. 201 

at any moment, what need was there, or reason, for far- 
reaching missionary endeavors and continued self-denials? 
Surely the mass of paganism could not be leavened in a 
generation by their hands ! But although the missionary 
Apostle himself might think often and entertain his 
own watchful opinions concerning the probable times 
and seasons of the Lord's coming, it is certain that no 
views which at any time he may have held upon that 
doubtful matter, and no logical inferences which might 
be drawn by others from such opinions and speculations, 
ever for one moment disturbed his knowledge of the 
commission to preach the Gospel in all the world which 
the disciples had received directly from the ascending 
Lord. The love of Christ constrained him to preach 
the Gospel from Jerusalem even unto lUyricum. If, as 
many thought not impossible, the Lord should come to- 
day or to-morrow, he should find his faithful servant 
doing his work and seeking for the lost. 

Thus from the beginning the missionary motive has 
risen above perplexing questions and doubtful disputa- 
tions in theology. It has not been lowered or dimmed 
by changes which in the past fifty years have come over 
our prevalent theology. It is now, for example, a gen- 
eral opinion in evangelical circles that God will apply the 
work of Christ for the salvation of any heathen who 
may have lived up to the light of nature. The modified 
Calvinism of New England recoils from the extreme 
belief that only the small fraction of the human race to 
whom Christ has actually been preached can possibly be 
saved. The Christian theologian hopes to greet Socrates 
among the humble-minded searchers after truth upon 



202 The Reality of Faith, 

those final heights of heavenly wisdom. There is, 
indeed, no explicit warrant for this belief in the Scrip- 
tures. Peter's exclamation of surprise, when Cornelius 
had sent to him to learn of Christ, has no immediate 
reference to our question what shall become of the 
heathen whom no providence leads to learn of Christ 
from any apostle, at least in this world. Like that 
other general opinion among modern believers that those 
who die in early infancy shall be graciously saved, this 
belief that in some gracious way God may accept many 
unconverted heathen, is an extra-Scriptural belief. It 
is not un-Scriptural ; but it is extra-Biblical. Jesus 
never said one explicit word upon these subjects about 
which we ask many questions. Nevertheless, Christians 
generally have come to cherish such gracious hopes 
because they seem to spring up spontaneously in the 
heart of faith from our Christian conception of the 
character of God. As teachings of the Spirit of Christ 
in the Christian consciousness of the Church they com- 
mend themselves to believers, and are not found con- 
trary to the Scriptures. But do these commonly- 
received views of God's larger, though " uncovenanted" 
mercies, stand in the way of the missionary activity of 
the churches among which they prevail? It might 
easily be shown that logically they must restrain mis- 
sionary effort. And it has not been among us an 
altogether unheard of thing for men to justify their 
apathy in this cause by the reflection that it might be a 
mistaken kindness for us to bring the heathen to the 
knowledge and judgment of the Gospel. Why should 
we take infinite pains to preach the doctrines of grace to 



The Missionary Motive. 203 

people who can be saved by the light of nature and 
conscience ? 

The fact, however, that any belief may be apparently 
either stimulating, or repressive, is very secondary and 
minor evidence when we are seeking earnestly for the 
whole truth. Thus it might greatly stimulate Sunday- 
school work if it could be proclaimed that all persons 
who shall not be converted before they are twelve years 
old shall have no further opportunity of grace. Possibly 
it might give the evangelist great success if he could 
stand in a pulpit and say, "All who do not come to Jesus 
before the clock shall finish striking twelve, shall have 
no further day of grace." Possibly it might inspire the 
Church with great missionary zeal if it were revealed to 
us that all to whom we cannot carry the Gospel have no 
other means of salvation. But also so tremendous a 
responsibility might prove too strong a stimulus for faith 
to endure ; so terrible a fear might not merely " cut the 
nerve of missions,'^ but paralyze the heart of Christian 
love. An impossible task might crush the spirit of our 
missionaries ; and the heavenly Father in the word of 
his grace has never laid upon the messengers of the glad 
tidings a burden which human hearts could not bear. 

It would be, on our part, a foolish fear, and a grievous 
suspicion, to imagine that a growing charity of faith 
towards God by which most Calvinistic divines have 
been restrained from judging that all heathen without 
knowledge of Christ must necessarily be lost, has 
rendered them indifferent to the missionary spirit of 
Christianity, or has tended to diminish their contributions 
for that most Christlike Avork to vrhich any heart capable 



204 The Reality of Faith. 

of responding to the love of Christ is gladly constrained. 
Their extra-Scriptural, but not un-Christian opinion con- 
cerning unrevealed possibilities of grace for the heathen 
would certainly be a right thing in the wrong place if it 
should be found for a moment in the way of their mis- 
sionary work. These alleviations of the theology of 
New England, which honorable men still with us have 
happily wrought for us, have not apparently cooled the 
ardor or enervated the energy of our churches in their 
work for missions. Those who have succeeded in 
modifying Calvinism in the direction of a larger faith in 
a universal atonement have not failed in greater works 
of charity on account of their broader conceptions of the 
love of God in Christ. Those who would modify Calvin- 
ism still further in the direction of a larger faith in the 
universal dispensation of the Holy Spirit are not likely 
to lose their love for souls in their clearer trust that God 
has in his design one universal system of Christian grace 
for the whole world. Their missionary motive rises 
rather than falls with their growing faith that our work 
is a part of the whole dispensation of grace, and where 
we cannot go in his name, beyond all possible effort of 
ours, Christ may still have ways unrevealed to us of 
sending his Spirit to all souls, of whatever age or land, 
before their final decision of character and judgment. 
And the Christian Church, believing in God^s love in 
Christ for the world, and receiving its commission of the 
Gospel from the Lord who died for all, while hospitable 
to any suggestion which the fathers may have made, or 
which may still be drawn from better methods of study- 
ing God's Word and learning the mind of Christ concern- 



The Missio7iary Motive. 205 

ing any of the dark problems of its theology, will hold 
ever sacred its missionary heritage ; and under the con- 
straining love of Christ it is pressing forward to greater 
works of faith, and shall rejoice in triumphs more 
marvellous of redeeming grace. 

The zeal of the chief apostle in his missionary preach- 
ing was kept up to white heat not only by his inward 
fervor of spirit, but also by the pressure upon him of the 
great opportunity for the Gospel wherever he went. He 
could hope in his life-time to seize upon the chief cities, 
the commanding commercial centres, for Christ. The 
straight ways of the Roman empire ran in every direction 
before the ambassadors of reconciliation. The constrain- 
ing love and the great opportunity worked together in 
causing his soul to burn with zeal. What, then, would 
have been his appeal to the churches, if he could have 
stood upon the platform of the American Board at any 
of its recent meetings, and spoken to us in the midst of 
our world-wide opportunity ? God is giving us in our 
day a grander opportunity for the Gospel than the first 
missionary apostle ever dreamed of seeing. A world 
greater than the Roman empire lies in every direction 
open to our approach. Powers of the earth and the air 
unknown to the ancients wait to speed the messages of 
Christian faith. The Church has now the opportunity 
of the centuries ; — shall it not have the answering love ? 

I must here crowd large considerations into a small 
space. Think of the distance to which the hand of 
Christian love may now reach. St. Paul with his letters 
and journey ings often could reach at furthest only a few 
hundred miles around him ; but now Christian benevo- 



2o6 The Reality of Faith. 

lence holds the whole world in its hand. The Christian 
merchant can go to his counting-room and send forth a 
check that may wing a benevolent thought of his heart 
around the world. It may light in a college in Turkey, 
from which men have been sent forth with a Christian 
education to positions of responsibility and power ; it may 
hover over a school for girls in the East, where w oman 
is waiting for the deliverance of the Gospel of the Son 
of Mary ; it may enter as a ray of light the dark con- 
tinent ; it may help swell the stream of Christian influ- 
ence for the regeneration of India ; it may travel on its 
mission of mercy along the crowded ways of the Celestial 
Empire ; it may meet with Christ's hope for the future 
the awakening mind of Japan; it may fly across the 
ocean and reach the shores of the isles of the sea ; it may 
follow the lines of new railways — a messenger of peace — 
through the stormy heart of Mexico ; it may visit prisons 
and hospitals, carry bread to the starving and succour to 
the suffering, and return from its world-wide flight to 
his own door, a prayer and a blessing for him and for all 
Christians who, gladly constrained by the love of Christ, 
have sent forth under the whole heavens the angels of 
their charity to bring laws and liberty, to leave righteous- 
ness, joy, and peace in the Holy Ghost among all peoples 
and nations for whom Christ died and rose again. 

Think, too, how little it costs to transform your gifts 
through the devotion of others into actual work done 
among the heathen. It is said that it costs this govern- 
ment some fifteen cents to deposit every dollar of its 
appropriations among the Indians; it costs you — how 
much ? — for every dollar which you can take from your 



The Missionary Motive. 207 

business ? But, besides three cents on a dollar spent in 
scattering missionary information, it will cost you just 
three cents through the American Board to deposit in 
Christian work at the other end of the world any dollar 
which the love of the Master may constrain you to drop 
into our contribution-box for foreign missions. And 
how wonderfully the Lord multiplies the rich man's gifts 
by the hands of his self-denying servants who in the 
heroism of modern Christianity are spreading the glad 
tidings in every land ! Besides the world-wide reach 
even of the feeblest hand of Christian benevolence through 
our great missionary societies, and the indefinite multipli- 
cation, through the self-denials of devoted workers, of the 
rich man's gifts, let me remind you further of the promise 
now resting upon missionary fields. Hardly seventy-five 
years ago three students at Andover asked the Associa- 
tion of Congregational ministers whether they considered 
their thoughts on foreign missions visionary and imprac- 
ticable. Now, as the results of the foreign missionary 
societies of the United States alone, nearly five thousand 
mission stations and sub-stations, about six thousand 
laborers, over two hundred thousand enrolled com- 
municants, and some fourteen hundred schools are the 
answer substantial and glorious upon the white mission- 
ary field of the world to the visionary thought of Christian 
love in the early years of the present century. Now that 
the beginnings have been made, now that the years of 
patient waiting without a convert have been lived through 
in more than one station, now that the doors of over two 
hundred and fifty languages and dialects have been 
opened for the entrance of God's word, now that the 



2o8 The Reality of Faith. 

vision of the beginning of the century has become the 
sacred trust of the Church, what wonders of redeeming 
love may we not expect to see before this missionary 
century shall close ? Lift up your eyes, and behold ! 
The bow of a divine promise rests upon the ends of the 
earth ; and everywhere Christian laborers may go forth, 
they walk under the bright arch which spans the whole 
world with the promise of redemption ! 

Think also of the new demands made upon Christian 
love by these enlarging opportunities of missionary con- 
quest. The Lord admits us into the high responsibilities 
of the missionary century. Doubtless He might do this 
work without us. God might send legions of his angels 
to minister to the Christ in his work of redeeming all 
nations ; celestial choirs might sing the glad tidings on 
other hills than those of Bethlehem ; but God chooses to 
lay restraint upon the promptings of his own benevolence 
so far as to wait for our offerings of our lives, and to 
take us into the gracious responsibilities of his kingdom. 
He would train men for eternal life in his lowly service 
in this world. In some larger purpose of good for all 
men than we may fully know He waits for his people to 
scatter over the whole world the seeds which His Spirit 
shall make fruitftil. To our hands, for the largest, final 
good, He commits, in the patience of his love, the work 
of reclaiming the fields laid waste by man's sin. And 
now the urgent opportunities, the evident and increasing 
success of the Gospel in lands which but yesterday were 
shut up in their own darkness, do tax the nerve of our 
Christianity. Have we courage and perseverance enough 
for the great battle ? Have we reserve strength enough 



The Missionary Motive. 209 

at home for the victories which the heroes upon the 
advance line, the sentinels at the front, send us back 
word from post after post of missionary vigilance are 
within our reach, by the grace of God, with united effort 
on our part, easy to be won ? Are we ready to follow 
the Lord's command ? to bring up our reserves of money 
and of men ? to sound a forward movement along the 
whole line ? Or must we recall our brave soldiers from 
the front, from their prospect of glorious advances for 
Christ's hosts, in order that they may help us put down 
the attack of scepticism, denials, worldliness, back-bitings, 
theological enmities and disputings in our rear? My 
brethren, the danger to Christian missions in this day of 
the Son of man will not come through the breaking down 
of denominational fences, or the removal of any eccle- 
siastical fortifications between Christians; nor will it 
come through liberty of thought, or from our willingness 
to open the gates on every side to Christian scholarship ; — 
the danger threatens from an altogether different direc- j 
tion ; the danger to Christian missions comes from 
worldliness within the Church, from small ambitions 
and petty purposes among defenders of the faith, from 
our blindness to the Scriptures of God's daily providence 
which the Spirit of Christ is now writing large in the 
thought and upon the wants of the world. Before the 
great responsibilities of this grand missionary age the 
Lord Christ requires of us a return to simpler, sincerer 
Biblical faiths, and a new baptism of our own hearts in 
the Spirit of Christ, — and then a pressing forward with 
one mind and with all our might to the conquest of the 
world by the Cross of Christ ! 



2IO The Reality of Faith. 

I will not dwell at length upon the indirect and inci- 
dental benefits of foreign missions. They have not 
been thus far a bad business investment for this country, 
if we take no higher view of them, by their indirect but 
powerful influence in opening new channels of trade and 
in bringing reclaimed peoples into the commerce of the 
civilized Avorld. American agricultural implements, for 
example, have followed the landing of our missionaries 
upon barbarous shores, and American manufacturers have 
reaped rewards from the self-denials of our foreign mis- 
sionaries. Were they only the pioneers of civilization and 
commerce, a country which can squander millions on 
" River and Harbor Improvements " might well afford 
to cover with its flag, too often held by the red hand of 
rapacity, that fearless band of missionaries who are bring- 
ing American justice and liberty to races of the down- 
trodden and the oppressed. A vigorous missionary 
policy is for us the best foreign policy. It is a policy 
of peaceable conquest of the world for Christ. 

I will not, however, plead in a Christian pulpit as our 
warrant for patient continuance in this good work any 
of these lower, incidental, and commercial advantages of 
foreign missions. The venerable President Hopkins, in 
an address made at a recent meeting of the American 
Board in Portland, struck the key-note, above all con- 
troversy, which should echo and resound through all 
our churches, when he found in Christian love the 
inspiration and the power of this missionary age. To 
the music of this high motive all our benevolences are 
marching on. No other call will be needed by any heart 
capable of thrilling to the touch of Christ's Spirit, and 



The Missionary Motive. 2 1 1 

expanding with a Saviour's love for a lost world, God, 
in his wonder-working providence, is blotting out 
upon the map of the world the line of demarcation 
between home and foreign missions. We can hardly tell 
now where the one begins and the other ends. The 
world is one world now as it never has been before. 
Christian workers almost everywhere live now within 
telegraphic communication with one another. Work 
done now for foreign lands comes quickly home again 
along streams of immigration to our own shores. Seeds 
soAvn on far Western prairies shall erelong bring forth 
fruit whose seed in turn shall be wafted across oceans to 
bring forth more fruit in old civilizations. The distant 
is brought near, the whole world is at our door, and 
everywhere the Lord is coming ! He was not the Mes- 
siah of Judea only ; He was not the Lord of the Roman 
Empire only ; He was not the Creator of the nations of 
modem Europe merely ; lo ! the wilderness of the new 
world became a garden through his w^ord ; He is not the 
Saviour of America only ; behold ! the isles of the sea 
wait for his coming, and the ends of the earth are given 
him for his inheritance ! 

Let the love of Christ — that supreme missionary- 
motive — constrain us who stand in fiill view of the world- 
empire of the Cross to redoubled faith and zeal, to larger 
contributions worthy of Christianity, and to sympathies 
which know no bounds of place or sect, but are broad as 
the manifest destiny of the kingdom of Christ. In the 
consecration, prayers, and charity of all true believers 
let the Spirit of Christianity go forth along all the 
thoroughfares of commerce, and among the sinful and 



212 The Reality of Faith, 

suffering populations of the world, bringing a new law 
of life, and a brighter hope for the world to come, — even 
as the Master walked of old teaching the words of eternal 
life, and with a healing virtue in his garments for the 
slightest touch of want. 



XV. 

THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS OF FAITH. 

" jFor if t!)at to^itt is iont abja^ feas glorious, mm\i mow ti&at itt!)LC^ 
Kinainttt is ijlorious." — 2 Cor. iii. 11. 

OuE. lives are full of fever and restlessness. In truth 
is quietness, and God only never changes. It seems as 
though God had left all the thoughts and works of man 
in fluctuation and variableness in order that we may not 
find anything abiding and always the same to us, except 
God himself. It is not simply that we ourselves are 
passing, and our works are but for a day ; the lights 
which men follow as their guiding stars change before 
the eyes of the successive generations, and many things 
which once were held to be sacred and everlasting are 
the glory which passes from another age. We might 
bear better the changes which must come in our outward 
lives, if it were not for the changes which shake even 
those beliefs which have been life's foundations. Those 
sacred things which men would regard as most perma- 
nent are not always to the children as they were to the 
fathers ; are not to us ourselves, as experience broadens 
and we know the thoughts of men, what they were in 
other days. Sometimes our hearts grow weary of all 
change, and we wish at least that in the firmament of man's 
faith the stars would stand still. But over all the heavens 
falls the shadow of turning, save upon God himself. 

213 



214 ^^^^ Reality of Faith, 

None of us have ever seen greater changes, shaking 
the foundations of things more sacred, than that Chris- 
tian Apostle had seen who was born a Jew at Tarsus. 
The law given by Moses seemed to him permanent as 
the work of God. The sun might have been darkened, 
but the glory of Israel was forever. Yet a few short 
years only had gone, and he is thinking of that glory 
as something which is done away. That most sacred of 
religious forms is also of this earth earthy, and it must 
be changed. God only is unchangeable. It would 
have been most natural, had the Apostle stood look- 
ing back with regretful gaze upon the glory which was 
passing away. He might have wondered whether man's 
mind and heart can ever find anything upon which to 
be at rest. Where, we ask, in view of changes hurry- 
ing by us, shall we stop ? where shall we take our stand? 
There, we say, we will draw the line — but the next 
wave washes our line away. We say. Here we will take 
our stand ; — but the tide stops not at our feet. The 
Hebrew Christian Apostle who had seen a whole vener- 
able religion take in his lifetime its place among things 
mutable and passing, might well have grown weary of 
soul and wished that he was at rest ^dth his fathers ; 
but though in his day the religion of the fathers was 
changing, and the holy temple itself trembled on the 
verge of its destruction, he seems to have gained a faith 
which soared with a cheerful song above these passing 
things. He forgets to mourn over the glory which 
passeth away as his eye gladdens with the sight of a 
glory which excelleth. He assures us that all those 
things which men hoped might abide, and which were 



The Permaiient Elements of Faith. 215 

glorious, however excellent, fail in this one respect that 
they are transient and perishable ; but there is a glory 
which excelleth — there are the more glorious things 
which shall remain. 

Above and beyond all these passing forms of religion 
and of belief there are the things which remain. In all 
religion, in all faith, there are transient forms, and there 
are permanent elements. 

In saying this, I have said not much to help any one 
who may be tossed up and down in his own thoughts, 
not knowing what to think or believe. Yet I have said 
something ; and this, though little, is important. It is 
something to trust that there are permanent realities of 
things even though we may not yet be sure what they 
are. It is something to believe in our hearts that there 
are abiding elements of truth and faith even though all 
things may seem flitting like shadows before our eyes. 

It is utter loss of heart, it is coldness of mind like 
death, not to believe in eternal truth — to hold no more 
the first living faith of nature that there are things true 
and real and everlasting. If any man is in danger of 
this utter loss of faith, I know of but one remedy for 
him, and that is for him to go at once and do some 
truth, until in doing it he believes in it. We, however, 
believe that there are, that there must be, some perma- 
nent elements of faith, some things above all changes of 
the thoughts of men, which are real and abiding. The 
practical question for us is, how shall we distinguish 
that which is passing from that which remains and is 
more glorious ? 

I wish to indicate, briefly, several successive steps by 



2i6 ' The Reality of Faith, 

which it seems to me a candid mind may come to some 
certainty in the substance of things to be believed and 
loved. We reach assurance in faith only as we find for 
ourselves, first, the way up to Jesus Christ as the 
supreme authority of faith ; and then, secondly, find for 
ourselves the way down from Jesus Christ to the present 
hour, and the questions of our own times. Accordingly, 
let me enumerate several way-marks in this path up to 
Jesus Christ, and then down from Jesus Christ to any 
question upon our minds or hearts. 

First, we may approach the Divine Man through 
the constitutional wants and capacities of our own 
souls. Our own souls are prophecies of something 
diviner than ourselves. We have capacities for more 
than now appears. The Christian fathers used to say 
that the human soul is organized for God. Our own 
hearts are such echoes of divinity that we should listen 
in expectation for the Voice from above to speak again. 
It would be nothing contrary to human nature, if at any 
time God should manifest hunself in the flesh. Given 
on this earth such a being as the first man, Adam, and 
it is in order then to expect the coming of the second 
Man, which is the Lord from heaven. The Christ, 
in other words, is the only perfect fulfillment of human 
nature ; and we do need him. 

A second way-mark in the ascent to the Christ, is 
afforded by the fact that the world seems, in many 
respects, to have been made for a Christ to come. The 
apparent direction of the creation from the beginning 
has been ever to something higher and diviner. There 
has been a constant ascent of things towards the Spirit 



The Permanent Elements of Faith, 217 

and God. The course of nature has been one uniform 
prophecy of something better and more spiritual. At 
first, so far as we know, there was matter and motion ; 
then worlds and life ; then instinct, and life rising to 
self-consciousness ; then reasoning, and thoughts of the 
spirit searching beyond the stars; — and what wonder 
would it be, if, looking up and along this great ascent 
of nature man-wards and God-wards, we should see, 
standing at the end of it all. One in the form of man, 
yet having the glory of the Father's Person — One in 
whom nature itself, which came from God, returns at last 
to God — One in whom all things are made complete — 
One who finishes the whole creation, as, in his own 
person, he binds it to the throne of God. Without 
some Christ the creation would be unfinished, — a broken 
shaft without its capital — an image of divinity without 
its head and crown. 

Starting thus from our own souls, and taught what we 
may look for and dream of, at least, by the tendencies of 
nature, we strike next into the way of history, and in 
ancient times we come upon increasing signs of a leading 
and gathering of events according to some higher law. 
I mean to say that if, for instance, a man will take the 
books of Moses, and compare them with the records of 
the contemporaneous traditions and beliefs of the world, 
he will see signs in them of the working of some higher, 
spiritual power according to some supernatural law. 
There is evidence that the Bible begins to take form and 
shape, and to grow, according to some higher law, and 
for some perfect fruit to come ; as there is evidence that 
a plant which springs up from the ground feels the impul- 



2i8 The Reality of Faith. 

sion of something above the ordinary forces of the 
soil and the natural gravitation of the earth in which it 
strikes its roots. Follow up the growth of the Bible 
until you come to the age of its great prophecies. 
Examine it there ; make a section of it at that time ; and 
you will find it more difficult still to explain it all as a 
merely human product. The evidence increases that in 
the midst of human history a higher power is working, 
and events are being formed and shaped for some 
diviner end. You can begin to understand somewhat, 
when you reach the age of Isaiah, the true law of 
all this growth of the religion of Israel. It is a growth 
after a Messianic law. It is for a Christ to come. 
That is the law of the type of the whole dispensation. 
This farther purpose, this Spirit of the coming 
Messiah, forming and moulding the history of the Bible 
of Israel, distinguishes the Old Testament from every- 
thing else in antiquity around it. The working of 
God^s Spirit gives unity to the whole Bible ; and this 
law of the Spirit of Christ pervading it separates it from 
all other books, as the law of life in the tree in your 
orchard has lifted it up from the earth, contrary to gravi- 
tation, and distinguishes it from the ground which 
its boughs overshadow. 

Following thus the prophecy of the Spirit down 
through the old dispensation, we come to the Gospels, 
and the presence unmistakable of Jesus himself. 
Nature and history have led on, and pointed up towards 
him that should come ; and when he stands among 
men, declaring that in him the law and the prophets are 
fulfilled, he is his own witness. He stands in the 



The Permanent Eleme7its of Faith. 219 

centre where all lights converge, and all the generations 
are before him ; and the ages, looking up to him, say, 
" We cannot declare his coming ; he is not of us. 
Never man spake as this man. Never man lived as 
this man. Never man died as this man ! '' Having this 
record of the Son of God on earth, it is easy to add the 
confession : never man was born as this man ; never man 
rose from the dead, and ascended, as this man. This is 
only to believe in the thorough self-consistency of Jesus 
Christ. This is only to make one music of the whole. 
It is easier to believe wholly in the Son of God, than to 
believe in him in part. We believe, then, that his 
birth, and life, and death, and resurrection, and ascen- 
sion are in accordance with law — one law of divinity 
throughout. The heavenly beginning and the heavenly 
end are in accordance with that heavenly middle-part of 
the life of Jesus which men saw and knew, and which 
was not like man. 

I have indicated thus, in outline, at least, a way in 
which it seems to me, as a reasonable man, I can come up 
to Christ, and own him to be Master and Lord. His 
humanity is the proof of his divinity. 

We have found the Messias which is called the Christ ; 
but now the further question arises, how can we come 
down from the Christ to the present, so that we may 
know, for surety, amid the world\s changes and con- 
fusions, that we have the mind of Christ ? Briefly and 
generally, the way down from Jesus through history to 
us is as follows : First, many men saw, and heard, and 
knew Jesus of Nazareth. They told others what they 
had seen and heard. Andrew "first findeth his own 



220 The Reality of Faith. 

brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found 
the Messias.'' And Philip findeth Nathanael. So 
the good news spread, and from the testimony of eye- 
witnesses the world began to learn of Jesus Christ. 
Then many began to write out their knowledge of Jesus. 
There was formed a tradition, partly treasured up in 
remembered words, partly written, of what Jesus had 
done and said. Down into the second century we find 
men referring to this common knowledge of their Lord. 
Even if this were all, we should not have been left in 
total ignorance of Jesus. But the same Power which 
prepared the world for Christ, and led prophecy up to 
Christ, secured a fitting representation of the Christ to 
after generations, and is still, in spiritual ways, showing 
the things of Christ to the world. 

In coming up through nature and history to Christ 
we found in the Gospels the impression of Jesus' own 
Person and life upon the world. We now, in bringing 
Christ down to us, may use further the w^hole Apostolic 
literature as the interpretation of the mind of Christ. 

For, secondly, under the law of the Spirit of Christ 
there were formed and gathered up for the whole after- 
world the testimonies and writings of Apostolic men. 
The written Scriptures were finished in the New Testa- 
ment. These Apostolic men were chosen and trained to 
be the record-bearers of the Christ ; and they were fitted 
both by their personal position with Jesus or near him, 
and by the special working in them of the general 
power of the Holy Ghost, to be to us authorities for 
Jesus, and the first interpreters of the mind of Christ. 
We believe, accordingly, that this written Scripture is 



The Permanent Elements of Faith, 221 

our supreme authority. But this is not all. There 
is one step more to be taken before we can bring 
Christ down to us. 

Thirdly, we must receive something of His Spirit our- 
selves. We must read his words, and understand these 
authorities for Christ, in the spirit of Christ. We cannot 
vacate our own consciences and human hearts, and then 
hope to be filled from outside with the knowledge of the 
Lord. We must become ourselves in some measure Christ- 
like in our own thoughts, purposes, and feelings, in order 
really and fully to understand the Christ of the Scriptures. 
There has been working in this world from the beginning 
a divine Spirit. It was in the beginning moving over 
the first chaos of things ; it has worked through life and 
history up to the Christ ; and it has been working in the 
new world of redemption, showing to the spirits and 
hearts of men the things of Christ, and it has not sud- 
denly stopped working in our day, and left us only with 
the letter which killeth. This is simply to say, in other 
words, that the Bible is indeed a gift of God, but it is a gift 
of God to the spiritual mind of the Church. It is a gifl of 
God to the Christian sense of the Lord's friends. It is a 
gifl of God to the common Christian sense of the Church. 
We live in the dispensation of the Holy Ghost. 

I hope now we have found some light upon the 
question with which we began. How are we to distin- 
guish for ourselves between that w^ich is essentially and 
permanently Christian, and that which may be transient 
and passing in our beliefs and forms. Simply thus : 
we are to receive first from the Scriptures, so far as they 
go, the words of Jesus, and the teaching which by his 



22 2 The Reality of Faith. 

Spirit he meant to leave for us in the words of his chosen 
witnesses. Then we are to understand these words and 
teachings, to discover their substance and harmony, so 
far as we may, according to the best mind which God 
has given to good men, and^ after the most Christlike 
ideas we can cherish as we seek to receive for ourselves 
the Spirit of Christ. Jesus Christ, the Christian Scrip- 
tures, and the Christlike heart, — ^these are the means given 
to men of knowing the everlasting truths, the abiding 
realities, the true God and eternal life. And this is 
precisely what the Apostle John said in the twentieth 
verse of the last chapter of his epistle : " And we know 
that the Son of God is come ; " — that was the disciple's 
positive knowledge of the historic Christ who had come : 
" The Son of God is come, and hath given us an under- 
standing, that we may know him that is true ; '^ that was 
the disciple's spiritual discernment of Jesus and the 
mind of Jesus, the knowledge to which God's Spirit 
opened the eyes of their understandings, a special gift of 
understanding Jesus imparted to the Apostles, yet in its 
nature not unlike the work of the Spirit in opening the 
minds of men often to fresh meanings in God's words 
and works : " And we are in him that is true ; " that is 
the full and final security of Christian faith and truth, 
for Christians to be in their own hearts, purposes, and 
desires, as much as they possibly can, in him that is 
true, " Even in his S«n Jesus Christ. This is the true 
God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves 
from idols." Hold to the real, essential, everlasting 
Christian things ; keep yourselves from worship of the 
forms which cannot last. 



The Permanent Elements of Faith. 223 

I want now to bring these remarks to their more direct 
bearings upon present things. Having indicated, though 
generally and without stopping to defend, or even to 
guard from misapprehension, some principles of Chris- 
tian discrimination and confidence, I wish further to 
make trial of them in a few applications to present 
religious questions and conditions. 

Not long ago a mere child said to me, " Perhaps I 
shall not believe when I am a man all the things which 
you believe." Surprised for a moment, I reflected : 
There is before me in that child another mystery of a 
living soul, called of God to work out its own life and 
its own faiths. Why should that child believe by and 
by all the things which I do now ? If it be true to 
itself and its God, why should it not grow in its day 
beyond us in knowledge of divine truth ? I revere the 
fathers ; but some things which they held we have found 
belonged to the glory which was passing, not to the 
more excellent glory of that which remained. What 
ought we to wish for those children ? To make their 
minds copies of our own ? But the law of life is not a 
law of exact imitation. You can make a copy in clay. 
Life produces resemblances, but copies nothing. Not a 
dead faith would we give to our children. We would 
bring them to a living faith in those things which are 
essentially of God, and eternally Christlike. We would 
not seek anxiously to reproduce in them all our ideas 
and beliefs about religion, and about the Bible ; but we 
would bring them gladly to Christ who is the Truth of 
God ever showing itself to the world through the Spirit. 
He has for them and for all generations, for each in its 



224 The Reality of Faith. 

own tongue, the words of eternal life. We would teach 
our children, above all things, those truths in the Scrip- 
tures, in the mind of the Church, and in our own 
thoughts, which reflect most clearly, quietly, and purely, 
the everlasting realities of God's kingdom and its right- 
eousness. We would urge them in the early consecration 
of their own minds and hearts to seek with us, in the 
company of the disciples, for the guidance of the Spirit 
of Christ. We would see them beginning to walk their 
way of life with the Christ, who only can guide into all 
truth, hoping that, as they follow the leadings of his 
Spirit, they may live to behold in their day more of the 
glory which remaineth, and which excelleth, than we 
have seen, or shall see, this side our graves. 

This, accordingly, is one application of my sermon to 
parents who are sometimes troubled by the new questions 
which their children are asking, and it may not be an 
untimely suggestion for present efforts in the Christian 
education of the young : let us seek in all ways — and 
the fresher the better — ^to help them receive for them- 
selves the simple essentials of Christ's Gospel ; let us, in 
guiding them, look up ourselves steadily to the clearest 
and abiding truths, those exalted and luminous Chris- 
tian truths, the substance of things hoped for, by which 
the good in all ages have directed their steps ; let us 
pray that those among us who are young may be brought, 
not indeed into all our thoughts and ways, but under 
the inspiration and the saving power of the grand, 
simple, beautiful laws of the Christian life. 

I turn a moment to another application of this subject. 
In many directions the surface of religious life is now 



The Permanent Elements of Faith. 225 

rippled with the breezes of discussion ; and to some 
devout and sincere men the Congregational churches 
seem to be slipping into deflections from the faith which 
may end, they fear, in serious loss to evangelical religion. 
I need hardly say that we must recognize the fact that 
at this time, as in every age of growth and revival of 
religion in the history of the church, many things are 
changing, and there is a glory which passeth away; 
nevertheless, this century, like all before it, belongs to 
the Lord and his Christ, and our only fear should be 
not to run ourselves before, nor to fall behind the Lord's 
leading of his people. One duty, however, always 
incumbent upon believers, seems to me especially urgent 
in any seasons of agitation, religious discussion, or transi- 
tion. We should live and abide, as much as possible, 
with our ow^n hearts in those truths which to us are 
most real and vital. Our private opinions may be 
needed in the world ; our own forms may be necessary 
now — I do not say that w^e should not maintain them ; 
but I do say that for our own quietness and inner truth 
of faith we need to look away from this present, and 
to cherish in our thoughts those elementary Christian 
truths which belong to the heart of the Christian faith 
in all the ages. And these are not passing away. They 
may be coming out in simpler beauty, in nearer approach 
to the conscience of the world, in larger revelations of 
their essential glory ; but they are not passing away. 
The belief in God is not passing away, — how can it? — from 
the soul of man who is God's child. But from all our 
questionings of nature, and wrestling of doubt w^ith the 
unknown angel of the Lord, we are learning, perhaps 

15 



226 The Reality of Faith, 

never before so deeply, what those old Hebrew words 
mean, — The living God ! A candidate for the Gospel 
ministry rejects, as though there were no fresh manna for 
his faith in them, words of belief in the divine govern- 
ment and its inexorable necessities, upon the strength of 
which others in former days have done their work, and 
men look askance and think a glory has passed from the 
faith of one of the oldest of the New England churches ; 
but they should have noticed, striving for expression, the 
fresh faith in a living God who is personally and imme- 
diately concerned with all things, and most of all with 
the living souls of men ; who has not withdrawn himself 
behind a constitution of things, and whose government 
is not that of a divine statecraft ; the living God who is 
personally conducting this universe, balancing every star, 
and clothing every lily of the valley, the Father of all 
spirits. And do we not need more of this kind of 
faith in God? 

Again, men are disusing expressions of belief once 
common concerning the atoning work of Christ ; and 
some, sincerely troubled, say : So passes the glory of 
the Cross. ISTot so, my brethren. The glory of the 
Cross can never pass from earth, because it is the eternal 
glory of the love of God. Listen again, and humbly ; 
and still upon our lips, although in simpler words of 
human love and need, you will hear the song of the ages : 
" Worthy the Lamb that was slain.'^ God's Spirit is 
bringing closer home to our hearts the divine human 
need there was for such sufferings as Christ's in the 
forgiveness of the sin of the world. Again, there seems 
of late years to have fallen over our pulpits a great 



The Permanent Elements of Faith. 227 

silence upon the subject of the judgment-day. And 
some say, Shall Jesus' word of eternal life and eternal 
punishment pass away from our pulpits ? No, not so. 
Perhaps God has seen fit to make a little silence in our 
pulpits that our confused echoes of Jesus' Gospel might 
die away, and men listen again with hushed hearts to 
his eternal words. It was time that the echo of great 
Csesar's voice in our Latin theology should cease, that 
we might listen again for the still small voice of con- 
science, and the calm, eternal word of the Lamb upon 
the throne. We had to cease repeating the father's ser- 
mons upon sinners in the hand of an angry God, at 
which once indeed the souls of men trembled, but by 
which now they are not moved, in order that we might 
begin to preach again according to the warnings of our 
own hearts the fearful wickedness and doom of a soul fly- 
ing with wilful selfishness into the face of the glory of 
the loving. Christian God. Now that scholastic concep- 
tions of human depravity, lacking moral reality, are 
breaking up, and too mechanical conceptions of retribu- 
tion, failing in vital power in the life of the world, are 
passing away, the truth from of old remains looking 
down as from Heaven upon us, and commanding us. 
God is holy, and our hearts condemn us. And now the 
silence which had fallen on our pulpits begins to be 
broken by more than one trembling voice declaring 
the awful possibilities of loss, degradation, and death 
involved in the natural destiny of a soul which cuts 
itself oif from its own proper environment of truth, 
love, and God. The old truth, the permanent truth, 
the substance of the truth, which needs to be preached to 



228 The Reality of Faith, . 

every generation of selfish worldlings with prophetic 
power, is not to pass away — ^the truth of the eternal laws 
of retribution, of the deadly consequences of sin, of the 
peril of trifling now with a gift of God so precious as 
the life of a soul. The words of Jesus do not pass away, 
although we are learning to confess that we do not find 
in his Scriptures an unreserved revelation either of the 
strange beginnings, or the possible endings of sin, and 
Christ has many things to say to us which we cannot 
bear now ; while, in the silence of our own confused 
echoes of the Lord's words, we may hear a fuller, 
sweeter revelation than before of the glory which 
remaineth, the glory which excelleth, even the eternal 
love of God in Christ. 

Neither are the motives to repentance and a godly 
life passing from us. The deeper down into God's 
thoughts in this world we can go, and the more we may 
learn of the Lord's ways and his will for souls, the 
more reason have we to trust, and to live wholly in the 
simple, childlike confidence of the Christian heart. And 
the more we learn of our own evil nature, and our own 
weakness and need of being put right, and kept right, 
the more reason have we for the humble prayer of the 
heart for the forgiveness of sins, and the presence of the 
Holy Spirit in our lives. God in his own gracious 
Christianity is now ever round about us ; our true life is 
in that divine air and element of being. The one thing 
needful for us is for our souls to breathe and live again 
in this all-vitalizing presence and grace of God. We 
must come into entire, happy harmony with eternal 
things, or perish. 



XVI. 

TIME A RATE OF MOTION. 

" But, fi£lob£lJ, it not Ignorant of fiiis am ttrng, tj^at one iaj is 
toit!) tf)£ 5LorIi as a Ifjousanlr ^zkxs, anU a ttousanlJ sears as one Ijas." 
— 2 Peter iii. 8. 

I HAVE chosen this text for a sermon upon the closing 
Sabbath of another year, because it is an attempt of an 
inspired Apostle to lift his brethren out of the common 
wordly view of time up into something like God's view 
of the years of man's life. The Apostle evidently wishes 
us to look down upon the flight of the years more as 
God in his eternity looks down upon them. We are to 
approach the idea of eternity not by multiplying years 
together in indefinite figures of time, but more simply 
and truly by remembering that with the Eternal our 
measurements of time have no importance ; one of our 
days with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thou- 
sand of our years are as one day. 

The philosophers have invented many ingenuities of 
speech in the attempt to bring the intuitions of space 
and time within the compass of human understanding. 
The scholastics used to say of space that it is a circle 
whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumference is 
nowhere. And the medieval theologians labored to 
impress upon men the duration of the eternal ages by 

229 



230 The Reality of Faith. 

representing a bird as pecking against a mountain, and 
removing in its bill every time it rose a grain of sand ; 
and by the thought of the length ®f time it would take 
for the little bird to remove, grain by grain, the moun- 
tain, they sought to find a mental unit of measurement 
for the ages of eternity. Others have imagined a strong 
tower standing, in the midst of a flowing stream ; and 
they have said, the ripples at its base represent the pres- 
ent moments ; the stream below the tower represents the 
time which is past and gone ; and the waters flowing 
down from above represent the future hurrying towards 
the present ; while the tower itself, standing unmoved in 
the running stream, is the symbol of that which never 
changes, the eternity of God. 

But the inspired text is simpler and truer than these 
imaginations of the philosophers. With the Eternal a 
thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thou- 
sand years. God inhabiteth eternity. As he is omni- 
present, and space has no distances to his free Spirit ; so 
he dwells in eternity, and a thousand years to him are as 
one day. 

Upon this last Sabbath of the year I wish to suggest 
some thoughts with regard to the time given us on earth, 
seeking, as I shall speak, to look upon the passing years, 
as the Apostle in our text evidently wished to have 
Christians do. I ask you therefore to reflect, first, that 
time is a gift of God to the creation. Time is a bequest 
from the Eternal conveyed and secured in the constitution 
of the creation. These visible, revolving worlds are by 
nature temporal. Time is the rate of motion determined 
by the Creator in his own thought of the worlds. There 



Time a Rate of Motion, 231 

is uo such thing as time except as there are created 
worlds to mark time. AVe cannot conceive of time 
apart from the finite creation. Time is simply the rate at 
which the things which are made go on. There would 
be no time without a creation to keep time. God has 
set up the worlds to make and to mark time. He dwells 
not in these times of his creation, but he inhabiteth 
eternity. To hun a thousand years are as one day. 

Now, inasmuch as time itself is an original gift of 
God to the creation, we may well stop to reflect upon 
the value of this natal gift from the everlasting Father 
of perfect time to the creation. It is one of the primal 
evidences of the benevolence of the Creator. This origi- 
nal providence of perfect time for the world, true to the 
infinitesimal of a second through the ages of ages, is evi- 
dence of the far-seeing thoughtfulness of the Creator. 
It is the first condition and means of conveyance of all 
other good gifts of God. Reflect a moment how every- 
thing in man's life, and in God's own plan of man's 
education and redemption, would have been thrown into 
confusion and spoiled, had not the earth in the begin- 
ning been made a good time-keeper among the stars. 
Some fixed and inviolable order of succession, some law 
of perfect time is absolutely necessary to all man's work 
under the sun. If the order of time v/ere changed 
arbitrarily for the universe every now and then, history 
would be chaos. Time is the magna charta of all man's 
rights upon the earth. You recall how prominently in 
the first chapter of the book of Genesis the fact is 
brought out that the lights in the firmament of the heaven 
were made for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and 



232 The Reality of Faith. 

years. A superficial criticism says : This earth is an 
insignificant point of matter in space, and are we to 
believe, as Moses tells us, that the suns and stars were 
made with reference to man, simply to mark time for 
him ? But Moses was a wiser interpreter of God's 
thought in the creation than many who now know more 
than Moses could have known of the record of the 
rocks ; for he taught this truth, that time is God's first 
gift to the earth — ^the mornings and evenings of the days 
in which all things are made good in their seasons. 
Hence the most lordly star in space is doing no menial 
task, but fulfilling a kingly decree, as it marks upon the 
skies the times and seasons which God hath appointed. 
The ancient order of the heavens is the surety that our 
God is not a Sovereign who has made us of his mere 
pleasure, but one who has made all things according to 
his good pleasure ; and whether man's works upon the 
earth be good or evil, this solar system which God made 
shall keep true time without variableness, or shadow of 
turning, until the end comes, and time shall be no 
longer. 

Keeping in mind this fact that time is a gift of God 
to the creation, reflect, secondly, that what we know as 
time is only the particular rate of motion to which our 
life on this earth has been adjusted. My point is, in 
other words, that our time on earth is nothing necessary 
to God, or absolute, but only a relative thing, a present 
condition, or rate, of our existence, appointed to us by 
the Creator. This idea of time as a relative thing you 
can perhaps catch more readily in some illustrations of 
it. For example, you can easily imagine that the human 



Ti7ne a Rate of Motion. 233 

race might have been put to school upon a planet of 
swifter revolutions than our earth, and all our vital 
powers adapted to the more rapid succession of day and 
night upon that orb — our pulses made to beat propor- 
tionally quicker, and the whole mechanism of life and 
thought made to run more swiftly, — so that the same 
human history might be lived through upon that faster 
world — just so many days and years as shall fill up man's 
life on earth — yet at a quicker pace, and in less time, as 
we measure it by our earth's diameter ; while, neverthe- 
less, it would seem just as long upon that supposed faster 
world, because the motions and pulses of life and 
thought had been proportionally quickened. Increase 
the rapidity of the nerve-currents, and the quickness of 
thought, at the same rate that you suppose the length of 
a day to be decreased, and a shorter time would seem as 
the longer day. The sense of the duration of time, 
that is, is a mere matter of proportion between the rate 
of the physiological processes of our life, and the rate at 
which the world spins round. So, on the other hand, 
God might have graduated our rate of living and 
thinking to the motions of a slower planet than 
this earth, and still our consciousness of the duration 
of the years, our sense of time, have remained pre- 
cisely the same. Time, then, is only a relative thing, 
the rate of motion of the mechanism; nothing of 
absolute determination, or worth in itself. God has 
chosen this earth for our time-keeper, and adjusted 
our consciousness of life to its rate of motion ; God 
has determined the existing time-rate of human his- 
tory for us, out of many possibilities of different time- 



234 ^^^ Reality of Faith. 

rates, for reasons which he thought best, and which 
we do not know. 

Let me suggest one or two other illustrations of the 
point that time is a relative thing, of no absolute deter- 
mination or worth ; for I have a practical purpose, to 
appear by and by, in breaking up our common idea that 
time is to run on necessarily, as we now measure it, forever 
and forever. Let me suppose, further, that an insect flit- 
ting its brief day in the sunshine is sufficiently intelligent 
to be conscious of its existence, and the succession of events 
in its life. Its mechanism of life is adapted to the dura- 
tion of a summer's day. But at its quick rate of living 
that day might be as long as a year to us. The passing 
of a summer cloud might be as a dark age to an insect 
tribe. The wing of a gnat, it has been calculated, beats 
eight thousand times a second. We cannot begin to 
think so quickly as that. Sensation travels slowly from 
our finger-tips to our brains in comparison with that. 
But if thought could fly as quickly as the quivering of 
that wing, a second to a being capable of such thought 
would expand into minutes' length; the hours would 
grow into days, and the days into centuries. We can 
readily conceive of a thoughtful being organized with 
such microscopical fineness, and all its powers of experi- 
ence adjusted to successions of time so infinitesimal, that 
to its consciousness of being a day of our life might 
seem as a thousand years. Time, I say again then, is 
thus seen to be of no absolute worth in itself, but it has 
value only in relation to the uses and purposes of the 
created being for whom the stars keep time. 

I may make this idea of the relative nature of time 



Time a Rate of Motion. 235 

still plainer by reminding you how often in our own 
experiences we escape from the ordinary course of the 
world's time, and in a sense make our own time for 
ourselves, as we live in memory or in anticipation. For 
instance, seven years are a considerable time as marked 
by the signs of the Zodiac ; but we are told that they 
seemed but a few days unto Jacob for the love he had 
to Rachel. One hour of terrible mental anxiety may 
seem long as half a life-time, and in a single night 
hair has been known to turn white as w^ith age. There 
have been hours in which we have lived months. Fear 
and hope, sorrow and joy, thought and action, when 
intense, have a certain witchery and mastery over our 
time ; and not the revolutions of the earth, but the beatings 
of our spiritual pulses, and the life of our hearts, make our 
days short or long upon the earth. And you all know 
how in memory distinctions of times and seasons disap- 
pear, and what was long ago as measured by the circlings 
of the earth is as yesterday to the thoughts of our 
hearts. You shake your thoughts free from the burdens 
of many years, and are back again in memory in your 
childhood's home. It seems long ago ; yet, while we 
think, it seems again but as yesterday that we were 
children. We are together again an unbroken family 
in the old home. At the first break of day we reach 
forth our hands eager for the Christmas gifts. We sit 
down together at the home-table. We play the familiar 
games ; they are all there — parents, brothers, sisters ; — 
we hear the glad, familiar voices ; we feel again the 
touch of a vanished hand ; the old house wdth the gates 
hanging just as they did when we children swung upon 



236 The Reality of Faith. 

them, the fields, the woods, the brook, the snowdrifts, 
the fire upon the hearth, the fresh world, the 
happy endless days, — ^we are back among them 
again, we are boys and girls at play once more ; it was 
but yesterday ; yet, as we sit and muse, it all grows far 
away again, distant as a foreign land, a fair unreality of 
the past, shadowy as our dream of heaven. We have 
lived several lives since those first bright days ; we are 
living in a new world now ; toilsome plains, and stormy 
seas, which we have traversed, lie between now and 
then ; — how strange, how near, and then how far, 
is the depth and distance of the remembered years ! 
Nay, my friends, events may have come to you adown 
God's providences during the past twelve months which 
already seem as though they were both long past, and 
yet the nearest present ; one moment you feel still their 
first shock and daze, as though but now the hand of 
Grod was laid heavily upon you, and then as you go 
about life's way of duty, and bear your burden, it seems 
as though an age had already passed since you learned 
in your own home what death is ; since you laid your 
first-born in the grave ; since that hour when the nearest 
of friends suddenly vanished from your side, and the 
heart of your life was borne away with the spirit whom 
God took into eternity. Sorrow breaks the permanency 
of nature to our hearts, and changes the course of time 
for us. We grow old in a day. A great bereavement 
makes one day seem like years of life, and again the 
years disappear and seem but as one day since the com- 
panionship of the friend who left us only yesterday. 
Do not all great, vital experiences of soul lift us above 



Time a Rate of Motion, 237 

these temporal things of nature, and enable us to discern 
somewhat how to the Eternal God our fleeting earth- 
periods are of little importance — one of our days to his 
abiding presence as a thousand years, and a thousand 
years as one day ? We mortals are all of us swept 
along in the flood of the years ; yet it seems as if we 
have power in sudden upspringings of thought to leap, 
as it were, out of this stream of time and change, and to 
catch some gleam upon our spirits of a higher element 
of existence, like God^s eternal light ; and then we fall 
back again into the hurrying stream which is our proper 
element of existence now. 

I would impress upon you the profound significance 
which seems to me to lie in this mysterious power with 
which we are endowed of rising in thought above the 
successions of events in our lives, and, while we stand 
in the spirit above the course of our own years, of 
looking backwards and forwards and annihilating the 
distances of time. It does mean a great deal that we 
have things past, and things to come, as well as things 
present, in our own consciousness of being. Human 
memory is more than a brute instinct for the guidance 
of life ; it is a present, conscious possession of the past. 
I am aw^are, indeed, that some materialists wax very 
bold, and imagine that they can explain our free, 
conscious mastery of time in memory by some supposed 
arrangements of the atoms of matter in the human 
brain ; but as the colors upon the palette of a painter 
are not enough of themselves to account for the picture 
upon his easel without the touch of the artist's hand, 
so the pictures of memory betray the presence of the 



238 The Reality of Faith, 

soul-artist, the free spirit within us, which combines at 
will our past experiences upon our present consciousness 
of life. And not only our artist-like power of memory 
over the past materials of life, but also this power which 
to some extent we have of making our own time for 
ourselves, like a Creator, our power to make our own 
rate of life, longer or shorter, as we hold time fast in 
our thought of it, or let the moments run by us, while 
we are thinking or acting, betrays something godlike in 
man. All this superiority of soul to time in memory, 
thought, and hope, means that there is something timeless 
and deathless within us — something of the being of the 
Eternal in the living soul of man. You and I are 
made of the dust of the earth, and are of yesterday ; 
but within these bodies bound to the earth, and destined 
to-morrow to return to its dust, is a godlike something 
which refuses to measure its life by the revolutions of 
the stars ; a something which sinks back into its own 
consciousness of being, and in its brooding thought and 
love forgets the passing hours and separations of this 
mortality ; a mystery of spirit within man which by its 
own thought of God and immortality proves itself to be 
above the course of nature, and possessed of a divine 
birthright. 

Have I not carried these reflections far enough to lead 
us out now to some practical conclusions pertinent to 
these closing days of another year ? 

First of all, let us take the help for faith in God's 
character which the text was intended to give. We 
wonder how God can live these long ages in the calm 
blessedness of his presence around our human history of 



Time a Rate of Motion. 239 

sin and death ; where is the promise of his coming ? 
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing ; — God 
does not measure his times by our clocks ; a thousand of 
our years is as one day to him. ^^ That to me," said a 
Christian gentleman recently, as we were speaking of a 
savage cruelty still permitted under the sun, "is the 
strongest objection against the character of God." And 
so it often seems. How can God see what we sometimes 
must see, and be still ? But, beloved, be not ignorant 
of this one thing ; — our measurements are not as the 
measurements of the Eternal. We are in the stream of 
time, and the breaking and the chafing of the stream 
over every pebble, and down the rocks, seems intermina- 
ble. When we shall emerge from it at death, and stand 
upon the shore, and see what God sees, our whole world- 
age may appear but as the course of a little stream, easily 
mapped amid God's everlasting purposes, and, after all, 
so short ! Everything depends upon the point of view 
from which things are judged ; and God looks from 
eternity to eternity ! You look out in the morning, and 
see a cloud overhanging the top of a mountain. At 
noon you glance up, and the south wind still leaves its 
vapors upon the mountain. At evening you may notice 
that the cloud is still there, though beginning to be 
changed by the setting sun into a glory. It has been a 
short day to you in your business and your pleasures. 
But had you been on the mountain waiting for the cloud 
to lift, and hoping for a clear broad view, the hours 
would have lengthened, and as you watched the time 
and the shiftings of the mists, the day would have seemed 
almost endless. We are now under the cloud — a very 



240 The Reality of Faith, 

little cloud of* sin and sorrow, it may be, — a passing 
cloud — in the large, bright universe of God ! We are 
waiting for the hour of clear revelation ; and this world- 
age seems long. But what is it to him who inhabiteth eter- 
nity, — who sees all around ? Beloved, be not ignorant 
of this one thing that one day is with the Lord as a 
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 

Again, these reflections may serve to teach us afresh 
the real value of time to us. Time, I have said, is 
simply the rate of the mechanism ; hence it is worth in 
any life pimply what it is used for — what is worked out 
in it. We may see, then, in what sense we should desire 
long life. It is really in itself considered comparatively 
unimportant how many days we live as measured by the 
sun ; the important thing is how much we live as 
measured by the growth of character. It is what we 
make ourselves to be in time which has eternal signifi- 
cance. We do not need to live a century in these latter 
Christian days to determine whether our lives shall bear 
good fruit abundantly, or are dead branches fit only to 
be cast away. We should look upon our lifetime as a 
means towards an end — time the means, and a Christlike 
character, worth God's keeping in his own eternity, the 
end of our life here ; — and if we but gain the end, then, 
so far as we are personally concerned, it really matters 
no more whether we die young, or in old age, than it is 
material whether one has much leisure, or only the needed 
hour, in which to prepare for an evening festival. The 
one thing needful is that the soul go hence clothed in 
Christ's wedding-garment; not how long a time God 
gives us to dress our souls for that perfect society. Has 



Time a Rate of Motion. 241 

he not already given us time enough ? The Lord may 
have his own reasons for keeping us here at our work a 
longer or shorter time ; and he may give us much enjoy- 
ment too of these temporal things while he keeps us 
here ; I am speaking now simply of our personal use 
and need of time in our preparation for the eternal life 
and society. These few years, more or less, of hope and 
care, of sorrows blossoming into joys, and pleasures 
fading into disappointments ; — what matter they — these 
passing moments, at the longest but short, of our earthly 
preparation for living and loving, for thinking and 
knowing, for soaring and seeing, for worshipping and 
resting in the presence everywhere of the everlasting 
Father ? Let our farewell then to another of the years 
of men be a word of faith ; let a pastor's New Year's 
greeting to a Christian people be a word of good cheer, 
as from that blessed life, nearer to us now, into whose 
fullness all the sparkling, troubled, hurrying years of 
human history at last shall glide. The year just going 
from us has been the end of this world-age to some who 
are of us, and but yesterday were with us. Death has 
opened for some the silent door into eternity at the end 
of a long path of life on earth, and to others near the 
midway height ; and also the everlasting gates have been 
opened before the feet of little children. It is so easy 
for our life here to stop. There is a moment's rustling 
of the veil which separates the seen from the unseen — and 
another has passed behind the veil, and a soul vanishes 
from our company to be seen by others again who have 
gone before. The grave at which we stood ourselves for 
the first time to mourn seemed as though we had never 

16 



242 The Reality of Faith. 

before seen a grave on earth. It brought all the strange 
ness and mystery of death home to our souls. Death 
has become familiar almost as life to many of us now. It 
is so easy for people to die. They are always dying. 
The least thing may be enough to stop this life in 
time. These bodies were made to die, as they were made 
to fall asleep. One who knew called death sleep. Both 
death and sleep are blessed mysteries of life. It is of 
little consequence what time the angel of life opens the 
door of death for us, and we step out of these walls of 
sense into the broad universe to see God. Whether our 
hearts shall be pure, and our souls made strong in grace 
to rejoice in that vision of the everlasting day, is the 
supreme concern for us. 

Several years ago I stood one afternoon in Mt. Auburn, 
reading the name of the dead from a marble shaft ; and 
while musing, and wondering if there were indeed a 
spirit immortal, and whither it had flown, I saw in the 
air the glimmer of a wing, and, as though dropped from 
out the blue sky above, a bird flew down from heaven, 
and alighted singing upon the tomb. I was looking 
upon the place where the dust had been committed 
to the dust ; and there came to me the symbol of the 
free, glad spirit. And not a sparrow shall fall on the 
ground without your Father. God knew, then, the 
flight of that singing-bird from the sky, and the thought 
of faith it brought to one looking upon a tomb. 

Beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that with 
him a thousand years are as one day. Let me leave with 
you this morning a word of faith from the God of the 
living who inhabiteth eternity. As we bury the year, 



Time a Rate of Motion. 243 

we preach Jesus and the resurrection. He that believeth 
on me, said the Man of men who knew, hath everlasting 
life. Behold, for all of us, now is the accepted time ! 
Eternity closes in around us. We, too, shall soon be 
out of this earth-time — beyond this world-age — and in 
eternity. The life which God would give is within reach 
of the child's hand. It is here for every contrite heart. 
The Lord Christ who is the resurrection and the life, is 
still with men, going down with us through these pass- 
ing days of the old year, and standing before us with his 
blessing at the gate of the new ; and his greeting is a 
glad voice from beyond time and death — and our hearts 
may hear it above the flood of the years ; — My peace 
I give unto you : not as the world giveth, give I unto 
you. A little while, and ye shall see me, because I go 
to the Father. 



XVII. 
THE LAW OF THE KESURRECTION. 

" But nobj is Christ xism from t^je iituli, anir Ittaraz i^i firstfruits 
of ti^tm ti^at slt^t." — i Cor. xv. 20. 

We have fallen into exaggerated and utterly un-Biblical 
views of the place and importance of death in our lives. 
Our common ideas and fears of death are more Pagan 
than Christian. Both in our belief and in our practice 
we are in the habit of giving to death an importance 
which it does not have either in the Bible, or in the 
nature of things. Consequently, we cheat ourselves of 
our own hope of immortality, and make a stumbling- 
block of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. 

Death to many men is the blank wall around life beyond 
which they look or plan for nothing. It is an abrupt 
chasm at the end of all paths. Death is nature's final 
contradiction of man. There is no reason in it. Our 
popular theology, inheriting fatal. Pagan notions of 
death, proceeds to invest it with a supreme moral 
importance. Physical death comes often to be regarded 
as the greatest crisis through which a human soul has to 
pass. The hour of death and the day of judgment are 
practically identified. All this is contrary to Scriptiu'e. 
Physical deatli is not made the important thing in our 
Bibles. Physical death does not hold the first place in 
the economy of redemption. The Bible assigns a subor- 
244 



The Law of the Resurrection, 245 

dinate place to our King of terrors. The Book of 
Genesis, it is true, invests natural death with certain 
punitive fears ; but it does not elevate death to the rank 
of the supreme and final transaction between man and 
his Maker. Sin, indeed, caused the natural possibility 
of mortality to pass into the certainty of death for man ; 
but Adam was not commanded by the Lord to live every 
day as though it were his last, himself a slave bound 
under the fear of death ; he was commanded to go and 
work in the sweat of his brow, but with a promise of 
God in his heart. Man is to work out his time here, and 
to pass through death, as a being not necessarily subject 
to death, but born under the higher law of the spirit, 
and with the possibility of eternal life always before him. 
And in the New Testament the chief use made of the 
fact of death is as a metaphor. Jesus makes a metaphor 
of what we call death. To him sin is death ; the maid 
whom the people thought dead, he said, sleepeth. The 
crisis of a soul's history is not in the Bible the death of 
the body. The fact of physical death and resurrection 
is used as the symbol of the greater change of a soul 
from sin unto life. Lazarus died twice; but had he 
died and been raised from the tomb by the Christ a third 
or a fourth time, those outward changes would not have 
determined what kind of a man Lazarus was ; — his relation 
to the Christ whom he had known at Bethany ere he 
died, and who stood before him, the first face which he 
saw looking with earnest grace upon him when he came 
forth from the tomb, — that determined what kind of 
a man Lazarus was ; — his relation to God in Christ 
was the beginning of the judgment to Lazarus, not 



246 The Reality of Faith, 

his going down to the grave, or his coming up from 
the grave. In short, physical hfe and death in the 
New Testament hold a secondary place, not the pri- 
mary; the place of the emblem and metaphor of a 
spiritual fact and reality. The importance of natural 
death in the New Testament falls into the background, 
and the New Birth of the Spirit comes into the fore- 
ground. Physical death does not cease to be regarded 
as an event appointed by God to all alike ; but it does 
cease to be a thing of terror, the final thing, an utter 
break across the continuity of life, in the New Testament 
doctrine of the resurrection and the eternal life. 

I have dwelt thus far upon our exaggerated and 
un-Biblical ideas of the place and function of natural 
death, because I conceive that it is necessary that we 
should obtain more reasonable and more Scriptural 
views of v/hat a merely relative and external thing 
death is, if we would take to our hearts the joy of this 
Easter festival, and really believe in the doctrine of the 
resurrection. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection 
is a stumbling-block to faith because we have allowed 
ourselves to exalt and to exaggerate death to a degree 
altogether beyond reason and Scripture. We speak, 
that is to say, and mourn, as though death were the last 
law of life, as though death were the ultimate fact of 
our experience, and then we have to smuggle in our 
hope of the resurrection as a miraculous exception to 
this universal power of death. Exactly the opposite 
is true. Life is the law of nature, and death a natural 
means to more life and better. Death is the lower fact, 
and life the higher. Or more specifically, the resur- 



The Law of the Resurrection. 247 

rection of Jesus was not the great exception to natural 
law ; it is an exemplification of the higher, universal 
law of life. 

This, accordingly, is my subject stated as a proposi- 
tion ; viz. — The resurrection of Jesus was in accordance 
with the higher, universal law of life. Death is foi* 
life, not life for death, in the ultimate constitution of 
this universe. The resurrection of Jesus is an instance 
of the general law that life is lord of death. His 
resurrection, as our text puts it, is the firstfruits of 
them that slept. In the opinion of the Apostle the 
resurrection of Jesus was no more out of the divine 
order of things, no more contrary to the ultimate law of 
nature, than the firstfruits of the summer are exceptions 
to the general law of life which in the autumn shall 
show its universal power in every harvest field. 

Before I proceed with my reasons for this assertion 
let me make my meaning clearer, perhaps, by calling 
your attention to the following discrimination. 

We believe in the resurrection of Jesus as the great 
miracle of history. The fact of Jesus' resurrection is 
the corner-stone of the evidences of supernatural religion. 
But now, you say, the resurrection was an instance or 
exemplification of a general law of life; do you mean 
then to deny that it was a miracle? Not at all. I 
mean to locate the miraculous under God's general law, 
in its own proper place in his conduct of the world, 
where we can see some reason in it and for it. I mean 
that the miracle was not the fact itself of the resurrecr 
tion of Jesus, for I hold it to be general law of life that 
tliere shall be a resurrection of the dead ; but the miracle, 



248 The Reality of Faith. 

in the instance of Jesus' resurrection, consisted in his 
appearance to his disciples, and also in the completion 
of his resurrection in his ascension to God^s right hand 
before the end of this whole world. What in other 
words was miraculous about Jesus' resurrection was not 
that God raised him from the dead, but that he was 
raised before the last great day, and that he should be 
seen by men, and recognized in his transitional or inter- 
mediate state between earth and heaven. The visibility 
on earth of the risen Lord, before he ascended to his 
Father and ours, was exceptional, out of the common 
course, or miraculous. And the God of the living had 
his own sufficient reason for making this one exception. 
It was partly for our sakes, that the world might 
believe. Was it not due also to the Person of Jesus 
that he should not wait with all the saints for the day 
of final redemption, even the redemption of the body, 
but that, having been made perfect through suffering, he 
should have ascended at once to the throne of God from 
henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his 
footstool ? The miraculous, thus, in Jesus' resurrection 
pertains to the manner and time of it rather than to the 
essential fact of it. It was the firstfruits of the resur- 
rection — an exceptional fruit appearing before the har- 
vest which is the end of the world. 

If you should see a tree break into blossom in the 
month of June, and the next morning find the fruit 
already ripe upon the bough, you would say. That is 
extraordinary ! It is not indeed contrary to the nature 
of the tree that fruit should ripen on the bough, yet 
contrary to all our experience of growth that the fruit 



The Law of the Resurrection. 249 

should ripen in a summer's day. That fruit would be a 
miracle upon that tree ; yet not in itself contrary to the 
nature of the tree, but only to its ordinary conditions 
of fructification. The fruit itself would be perfectly 
natural, only the method of its growth extraordinary. 
And it would not be impossible to conceive an enhance- 
ment, or quickening, of nature's forces which might 
cause a plant to break into fruitfulness contrary to our 
experience of its usual times and seasons. Somewhat 
so, in the view we are now trying to win, is Jesus' resur- 
rection a firstfruit of the tree of life; — not in itself 
contrary to the law of life, but in its manner and time 
out of the common order. In the miracle of his resur- 
rection we have only to think of God's quickening, or 
anticipating, by his power the course of nature, not as 
violating any real principle of it. 

It always is helpful to faith to locate mysteries where 
they will not be in the way of what we do know, and to 
put miracles in their proper place under higher and 
universal laws. All we need then to warrant us in 
believing in some exception to God's general method of 
working is to find some good reason for it, as we do in 
the anticipation of the general resurrection in the instance 
of Jesus Christ. 

Having thus endeavored to state and to discriminate 
my thought, I now proceed to give some reasons for the 
belief that it is true. I must condense these reasons, 
however, into the briefest possible space, hoping that 
they v/ill expand in your own thoughts. 

I find, first, no little Scriptural evidence for the belief 
that the resurrection of Jesus, although exceptional in 



250 The Reality of Faith. 

time and manner, is an instance of a general law of 
resurrection. This was Jesus' teaching concerning the 
resurrection. He answered the Sadducees of his genera- 
tion not merely by asserting his knowledge that the dead 
shall be raised ; but he placed the fact of the resurrec- 
tion upon the fundamental principle that life, not death, 
is God's first law. " But that the dead are raised, even 
Moses shewed, in ilie 'place concerning the Bush, when 
he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God 
of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Kow he is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto 
him." The fact that the dead are raised, therefore, is 
no isolated, strange event, no exception to the large 
nature of things ; for life is the rule, and death the 
apparent exception in the universe of the living God ; 
all are made to live unto him ; all souls are made capa- 
ble of existing in some vital relationship to the God of 
the living. This, according to Jesus' word, is the high- 
est law of human nature that it should live unto God ; 
if there is to be eternal death, that death must come in 
as the exception, as the loss of a possible good, as the 
falling back of a soul from the kind of life for which it 
was created to the lower powers of corruption. It is 
born for freedom and life in constant relation to the liv- 
ing God ; if it is to perish it can only be by making 
itself, through some inner falsehood, subject to corrup- 
tion. 

Again, the Lord's own resurrection is set forth as an 
event which could not possibly have failed to occur. 
We say Jesus' resurrection was a miracle, that is, con- 
trary to what might have been expected — a great excep- 



The Law of the Resurrection. 251 

tion to the law of death. But that is not the way the 
Scriptures put it. They say, " Jesus of Nazareth, a man 
approved of God — whom God raised up, having loosed 
the pangs of death : because it was not possible that he 
should be holden of it." "Moreover my flesh also 
shall dwell in hope : because thou wilt not leave my 
soul in Hades, neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to 
see corruption." It would be impossible for death to 
hold a principle of life like the Spirit of that Man of 
Nazareth. It would be a violation of all law should 
the Holy One be given over to corruption. There is 
something inlierently inconceivable and impossible in 
such a thought. How can Holiness see corruption? 
how can life itself be given over to death ? Impossible ! 
It would have been a miracle, had Jesus not risen from 
the dead. It would have been a violation of the inmost 
principle of the creation, had the mere dust of this 
earth held him as its own forever. It would have been 
a miracle without reason, a miracle not against the ordi- 
nary course of nature merely, but a miracle against 
God — ^the living God, — had he not risen from the dead 
— ^the firstfruits of this power and order of divine life 
in the creation. 

Once more, the same truth which we have already 
found suggested in Jesus* teaching concerning the resur- 
rection comes out clearly and grandly in the Apostolic 
Gospel of the resurrection. What is that wonderful 
fifteenth chapter of Corinthians but a setting forth of 
the glorious law of the resurrection ? First the histori- 
cal fact that Jesus was seen after his death is solemnly 
attested ; then Jesus* resurrection is declared to be the 



252 The Reality of Faith. 

firstfruits of the whole harvest of life which is to fol- 
low ; and then this process of the resurrection is shown 
to be in the largest and profoundest sense natural. It is 
a spiritual outgrowth from this body of death. The 
nature of the resurrection — the fashion of the body of 
the resurrection — is in accordance with law ; — if there is 
a natural body, there is also a spiritual body — the latter 
is just as much in the divine order of things as is the 
former ; — ^the creation is made and constituted for the 
higher spiritual body as much as for the lower natural 
body. The method, also, of the resurrection is in 
accordance with law ; — first the God-given seed — then 
its quickening in the earth — ^then its springing up out 
of its earthliness into its own element, and its being 
clothed upon with its own proper form and texture, as 
God gives "to each seed a body of its own." The 
whole process of the resurrection in its successive 
moments and stages is regarded in this chapter as in 
accordance with law. " Howbeit that is not first which 
is spiritual, but that which is natural ; then that which 
is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy : the 
second man is of heaven." The Apostle who wrote 
this chapter of the Gospel of the resurrection was not 
standing dazed before a miracle ; he saw no Almighty- 
ness snapping like cords the laws of nature in order 
that man might be delivered from the bands of death. 
He did not see nature resistlessly dragging man down to 
death and destruction, and then, by a sheer act of God's 
power, the whole gravitation of nature downwards 
towards death suspended, and the law of death in nattire 
broken, as a life suddenly came forth on the other side 



The Law of the Resurrection. 253 

the grave, and ascended, and gained the everlasting 
heights. Not such was the truth revealed to the Apostle 
who had seen the risen Lord, and learned that he w^as 
the firstfruits of the resurrection. He has caught a 
glimpse into the first principles of life which go deeper 
than death. He has looked up, and there has been 
revealed to him something of the larger spiritual envi- 
ronment of earthly things. He has seen this little 
material crystallization of things — this jewel of the 
creation — which we call nature, in its true setting in 
God's eternal purpose and order. He has followed out 
into the spiritual realm the ways of God through these 
natural spheres, and apprehended the unseen continuities 
of these earthly forces. He has learned, in one word, that 
the resurrection which he preaches is the promised ful- 
fillment of the laws of life which have been with God 
from before the foundation of the world. Hence there 
is no surprise — no thought of broken uniformities of 
nature, or miracle of power — in this whole chapter of 
the resurrection. Though it stirs our souls to read it — 
though we repeat its words with trembling lips when we 
bury our dead — though its vistas of revelation are mag- 
nificent beyond all prophecy of our hearts, — still this 
chapter contains in itself no word of surprise, no point 
of rapt exclamation ; — it is calm as a chapter of science. 
It is a lesson from the science of the higher order of 
the creation. The stars which differ in glory are no 
more miracles in the sky than is the resurrection of the 
dead to the Apostle who had seen the risen Lord. The 
sun and the moon are no more exceptions to the ancient 
order of the heavens than the souls of men raised from 



254 ^^^^ Reality of Faith. 

the dead, and clothed upon with the shining glory of the 
celestial, are out of the divine order and harmony to 
the eye of the Apostle who has seen the risen Lord. 

This, I say, then is clearly and unmistakably the Bib- 
lical teaching of the resurrection. It is in accordance 
with law. It is in the divine order of the creation. 
Why should it seem otherwise to us ? Why should we 
regard it as a thing incredible that God should raise the 
dead? Partly because in our pagan philosophies we 
have exaggerated the place and importance of death in 
the world ; partly, also, because we have fallen into gross 
and carnal imaginations of the resurrection and eternal 
life, which would be violations of natural law most dif- 
ficult to conceive. Planting, however, the standard of 
our faith firmly upon this high Biblical doctrine of the 
resurrection as the final fulfillment of the law of life, let 
us now survey the field of nature and see whether we 
have learned anything to make it a thing incredible that 
God should raise the dead. 

Let us indeed be thoroughly honest with the truth of 
nature. We do gain from our little knowledge of things 
a tremendous conception of law. When we stand upon 
a law of nature we have footing upon a solid thing ; to 
ask a man for the sake of faith to give up his foothold 
on natural law would be to ask him to walk upon the 
clouds ; his imagination may dwell up among the clouds, 
but his reason cannot. More than that, to invite a man 
in the interest of faith to shut his eyes to any fact of 
nature before him, is to ask him to be false to the truth 
of God in his own soul. But is there anything which we 
have seen upon this earth which contradicts the spiritual 



The Law of the Resurrection. 255 

law of our full redemption ? Apparent contradictions 
to this Gospel of the Spirit there are, but not one that 
does not grow thin when thought through; not one 
which is real. On the other hand there are positive 
facts arranging themselves now in lengthening lines over 
which we look straight out into the unseen and the eternal. 
The simple truth is that we cannot begin to understand 
or interpret this bit of the universe which we see and 
call nature, except as we regard it as existing in the 
midst of some spiritual environment, and at a thousand 
points running out into, and continuous with, something 
not seen as yet just beyond itself. As I cannot think of 
a star except as I think of it as in the sky, so I cannot 
think of this visible sphere of things, or nature, except 
as existing in some invisible realm and larger Presence. 
The living God must be close to everything. And par- 
ticularly, in confirmation of this Scriptural faith in the 
divine orderliness of the resurrection and eternal life, let 
me now merely suggest these considerations. First, as 
already intimated, we do know this that death is not the 
only law of nature ; there is also the law of life. Secondly, 
it is a fact that of the two laws life, not death, is the 
higher and prevailing power so far as we can see. The 
earth was dead, so they tell us, ages ago. There may 
have been a seed or two of life dropped from God knows 
where upon its cooling crust. Now how this earth lives ! 
There is hardly a cliif too barren for nature not to hang 
some blooming thing upon it ; and the old earth teems 
with life. Furthermore, even here, where death reigns, 
life has been growing higher, more complex, more capa- 
ble of larger correspondences with things. Between the 



256 The Reality of Faith. 

lowest living thing and the brain of man there is a dif- 
ference of life wide as the distance between the earth and 
the heavens. That first infinitesimal point of life has no 
world with which to establish relations larger than the 
microscopic field in which we have looked and discov- 
ered it, but we have established already relations of 
thought and knowledge with the farthest stars. Plainly 
then, without any doubt, life is something stronger thus 
far upon this earth than death. Notwithstanding death, 
life grows to be more and richer. I argue from this 
evident higher law of life on the earth nothing just now 
with regard to individual immortality ; but I reason 
thus : — If in this part of the universe which I do know 
I can see that things are made for ever more and better 
Hfe, and not for death ; that life on the whole thus far 
has proved stronger than death ; and, furthermore, that 
the whole efiPort of nature has been to develop a life 
capable of the largest things, not stopping with birds 
that fly beyond the hills, but reaching ever on up to minds 
capable of thoughts that fly beyond the stars ; if life, larger, 
richer, more capable of everlastingness seems thus the 
manifest destiny of nature, then I may reasonably credit 
the revelation which bids me believe that God's own 
thought is to bring life to everlasting triumph in some 
final deliverance from death, and that the living God 
will not pause nor tarry until he raises from this earth a 
race of the children of God capable of living forever in 
perfect unison with himself and his whole creation. 

But this is not all. What is death, so far as we can 
see what it is ? Here is a minute living thing in a glass 
of water. You turn the water out. That living parti- 



The Law of the Resurrection, 257 

cle is now mere dust upon the glass. Dead^ — that is, it 
is no longer moving in an element corresponding to its 
capacity of vital movements. AYhat is death then? A 
living thing is no longer in harmony with its surround- 
ings. It is thrown out of its own proper correspondence 
with things ; it is dead. Death then is a relative thing. 
It is simply some wrong or imperfect adjustment of life 
to external conditions. But death may be partial, then, 
not entire. A part of the body may be dead. A man 
may be dead in some relations, and still live in others. 
There is a sense in which we die daily. Parts of us are 
thrown out of vital relations. The body may begin to 
die long before it is dead. Death is but a relative, neg- 
ative thing. Life is the principle, the force, the law ; 
death the limitation, the accident, the partial negation of 
God's great affirmation of life in things. Now see where 
this thought leads. It points to two conclusions. Death 
is the sundering of certain relations of life towards out- 
ward things ; therefore, when the body finally is wholly 
dead and buried, when all these physical relations are 
broken off, so much of life is certainly gone ; but noth- 
ing else in a man, if there is anything more of him, is 
dead. Death is a relative thing ; it only means that 
certain correspondences have ceased. You must prove, 
then, that a man is now alive only to oxygen and hydro- 
gen, and such things, before you have any scientific 
right to speak of him as dead. " You may catch me, 
if you can find me, " said Socrates as he let his body 
go. And the Scripture says, " God is not the God of 
the dead, but of the li\4ng." There is a man walking 
through a field, thinking of home, or with his mind in 

17 



258 The Reality of Faith. 

large correspondence with principles and truths; and 
suddenly a flash of lightning strikes his body down. 
How far into the life did that electricity penetrate ? The 
lungs certainly have ceased to be in vital relationship to 
the air ; that is, the man as to his lungs is dead. The 
muscle of his heart no longer responds to any vital 
stimulus; so far the man certainly is not alive to 
things around him. But did the lightning pierce to 
that thought of home in his heart ? Did that flash from 
the sky put out that reason just then expatiating in the 
truth ? The lightning touched the mortal body ; — who 
knows that it reached to the spiritual body ? Perhaps 
that is more subtle than electricity ! Death we know to 
be often but in part. Why then should not that force 
which thinks, that power which loves, shaking ofi* 
in the dust of the earth its imperfect correspondences 
of this body with things, itself continuing to be, be here- 
after clothed upon with still higher and finer powers 
of contact and correspondence with all nature, and 
with the living God ? 

This view of the partial and negative power and func- 
tion of death opens a further rational possibility of life, 
which you Avill find discussed suggestively in Mr. Drum- 
mond's recent book on " Natural Law in the Spiritual 
"World," and which may be stated thus : We have only 
to suppose a living soul in perfect adjustment to God, 
and all God^s laAvs of things, to conceive of a being- 
possessing eternal life. " This is life eternal that they 
might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ 
whom thou hast sent." Eternal life is harmony of being 
with the true God, and the risen Lord. In such perfect 



The Lazu of the Resurrectio7i. 259 

adjustment of being to God, and his laws, the finite 
spirit would exist in its permanent, because perfect, form 
or celestial fashion of being, its final spiritual embodi- 
ment. Eternal life would be the perfect harmony of 
the inward and outward conditions — ^the final union of 
the spirit of the just made perfect with God and his 
universe. Such, at least, is the largest conceivable fulfill- 
ment of the creation, — a conception not in itself contrary 
to nature, but in accordance with the whole law of its 
beginning, struggle of life upwards, spiritual evolution, 
and consummation. 

I turn aside here from the pursuit of these invitiug 
analogies of life to some conclusions befitting this Easter 
morning. My sermon has been that, according to the 
Scriptures, the resurrection and eternal life are no strange 
miracle, but the fulfillment of nature in conformity with 
law. And we have seen that the analogies of life up 
through nature, combined with all that we really know 
of death, do not contravene, but lend confirmation to 
this teaching of the Scriptures that in the resurrection 
our life shall be made complete, and the end of the 
creation reached. So God's idea of man from before the 
foundation of the world shall be realized in the kingdom 
of the risen and ascended Lord. 

Now, then, if these things be so, it follows that our 
true life consists in our coming at once, in our own souls, 
into the right, and fullest possible correspondence with 
that which is the real and eternal element of life — with 
God, and his righteousness. AVe are made to live in 
perfect harmony with all good, beautiful, and true things, 
or in communion with God. The only thing to be 



26o The Reality of Faith. 

feared is spiritual death. That is non-adjustmeut of 
our hearts to God. The soul out of harmony with love 
and truth may become as dead as that animalcule left 
dry upon the edge of the empty glass. To attempt to 
live as an immortal soul without love, and not as in 
God's presence, is to dream of living in a vacuum. The 
true life is to know God. Even now they are most alive 
who have in pure and loving thoughts the largest 
relationship to all good. The wages of sin is death — 
death piercing farther than that flash of lightning could 
reach; death creeping into the heart; death clouding 
the eye of the intellect ; death, as Jesus said, destroying 
the soul in Gehenna. My brethren, there is one thing 
which I cannot but fear for myself and for you ; one 
thing greatly to be feared here and now for any man 
who is not eager to bring his own heart into glad and 
loving harmony with whatsoever of God or of Christlike 
things may be revealed to him — and that fear is the loss 
of one's own soul. It is the soul itself which we are 
noAV to gain or to lose. And I am afraid of the death 
which I see already going beyond the physical man, 
benumbing the conscience, and chilling the very souls of 
men. And though I cannot find any Scripture to teach 
me that countless heathen men are to be shut up in 
eternal darkness without ever having so much as seen 
for one moment of gracious revelation what a Christian 
Being our God is, or to lead me to think that any living 
soul of man shall be dropped forever from God's hand 
unless that soul in its selfish frenzy puts out its own eye 
for the Light, and takes its own death-leap out of the 
hollow of the pierced hand of Love ; although I cannot 



The Law of the Resurrection. 261 

with a good conscience before God preach to you any 
human conception of the nature of eternal punishment 
which I cannot first to my own thought bring under the 
law of eternal righteousness and love — and you would 
not believe it if I could ; — nevertheless, with an unblush- 
ing conscience, though ^dth a hushed heart, I can and 
Avill preach to you upon this Easter morn this principle 
of eternal life and death : He that hath the Son hath life ; 
he that hath not the Son of God hath not life ; he that 
loveth his life shall lose it ; w^hosoever speaketh against 
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in 
this world, neither in the world to come. There is a sin 
unto death which cannot be forgiven. For it is a deadly 
thing, poisoning the soul. The soul of the man who 
shuts God out from himself is as a dead thing. It is as 
dead as the lungs without air are dead. And before the 
thought of a soul sinning unto death, an Apostle stood 
still with bowed head, saying, " I do not say that he shall 
pray for it." 

While I can hardly conceive of such men as I know 
now as miraculously preserved by God's power, with 
unworn capacity of feeling everlasting torments, and 
being ages after ages — longer than a bird could peck 
away a mountain — continued in all their faculties just 
such men as I know them to be now, — w^ith the same 
good nature about them, with the same capacities for 
some noble deeds, with as much heart and soul for better 
things as even in their sinful worldliness they do show 
now, yet put by some appointment of God beyond the 
pale of redemption, the moral possibility of which is still 
left in their own nature ; and while I can find no such 



262 The Reality of Faith. 

imagination as this, and many another common concep- 
tion of the nature of eternal punishment, depicted in the 
Bible, and could not understand it, but only hold my 
peace, if I did ; while I will not burden the few simple 
words of the Christ with any imaginations of men, least 
of all with my own : nevertheless, there are some present 
facts of experience which enable me to conceive — I do 
not say it shall be so — I only say, in view of some 
present consequences of sin, I can conceive of a soul 
shrinking in selfishness, and shrivelling in lust, and con- 
suming in sin, until it becomes at last so dead that neither 
good man, nor angel, nor Jesus himself, could or should 
have further thought or anxiety for it ; so dead that no 
friend searching for it could possibly ever recognize it 
again ; so dead that the tenderest child of God might 
have no more trouble for it than the children at play on 
our sunny meadows have care for the dust of life beneath 
their feet ; so dead as to be in its ashes of manhood, and 
its own loss of the spirit, beyond hope — beyond even that 
hope for a soul which was first to live and shall be the 
last to perish, the hope of souls in God^s own heart of 
love ; so utterly and eternally dead as to be buried from 
the remembrance of the living, and to be lost as a free 
spirit even from God himself, — punished, as the solemn 
Scripture puts it, and as any being who ever shall turn 
from the full, gracious revelation of God in Christ would 
deserve to be punished with " eternal destruction from 
the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, 
when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to 
be marvelled at in all them that believed/' 

God alone knows what shall be. This conception, 



The Law of the Resurrection, 263 

also, of the possible degradation and loss of personality 
in eternal death is only our trembling projection upon 
futurity of one line of the present deadly consequences 
of sin, and we do not know. Nor do we find united 
and harmonized in one clear revelation in the Bible all 
the lines of our present moral experience, and all inti- 
mations of the Scriptures themselves concerning the 
future life and its eternal issues. This conception of 
final spiritual death, which I have just admitted as pos- 
sible, does not involve necessarily the idea of annihila- 
tion of being, or any final loss from the sum total of 
created existence ; but it implies the possibility of com- 
plete degeneration, through processes of sin continued 
beyond redemption, from personaKty and the life of per- 
sonality. Retrogression through sin may in repro- 
bate individuals be conceived as going so far as to 
involve the loss of the type of moral personality in 
which, and for whose perfect life, they were created. If 
science knows nothing of annihilation in the realm of 
physical force, it has read significant hints of reversion 
in the ascent of life. Is that a commentary of nature 
upon the Biblical revelation of the possibility of final 
moral arrest and retrogression of spirit — of the loss of 
soul in the world to come? But, however we may 
venture at times to realize what spiritual death may be 
in our conception of it, there is certainly contained in the 
same law which renders eternal life possible the possi- 
bility also of eternal death ; and this possibility of final 
shame and loss is not concealed from us in Jesus' Gospel, 
nor is it wholly hidden from our reason in the nature of 
things. The Bible plainly presents righteousness as 



264 The Reality of Faith. 

gain, and sin as loss, of soul. " I am come," said our 
Lord, " that they might have life, and that they might 
have it more abundantly." " For what shall it profit a 
man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul ?" " Fear him that hath power to destroy both soul 
and body in hell." " He that believeth on me hath ever- 
lasting life." " If a man keep my saying, he shall never 
see death." " He that heareth my word, and believeth 
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not 
come into condemation ; but is passed from death unto 
life." 

The Lord is risen indeed ; but every man in his own 
order : Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are 
Christ's at his coming. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the 
archangel, and with the trump of God. For the trumpet 
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible 
and we shall be changed. Wherefore comfort one 
another with these words, — ^yes, even with this great 
w^ord, " The trumpet shall sound." For why should we 
Christians ever think of that great voice, and that last 
trump, as a wild alarm resounding through space — an 
awful voice of doom ? Shall it not be the full, joyous 
melody of grace made audible everywhere at last, and 
not one discord left? that archangeFs voice the har- 
mony of all sweet voices of peace and good will on earth ? 
The trump of God ! ringing out upon the universe the 
great joy of the long expectant Christ, swelling and 
echoing to all worlds the peal of life's full triumph over 
death ! The trump of God ! filled with the harmonies 
of the eternal love, of notes so pure and soft that the 



TJie Law of the Resurrection. 265 

last sick earth-child, saved by grace, shall awaken with 
a smile to hear heaven's music in it ; and resounding 
also beyond the stars, as the voice of many waters, as 
the sound of a great host, proclaiming that the kingdoms 
of this world are become the kingdom of the Lord and 
his Christ, and heaven shall be forever where once were 
time and death, and God who is light shall be all and 
in all! 



XVIII. 

LIFE A PROPHECY. 

" JFor ilt tcantst wpMtatioit of tf)£ ^rtalioit toaitttb for ti&t xthtdiUn% of 
i\)t sans of (Gcolr." — Romans viii. 19. 

We are living in what may justly be called the pro- 
phetic season of the year. This month of May is to the 
months to come what Isaiah is to the rest of the Bible. 
Nature now in the living trees upon the hill-sides has 
her companies of prophets, and in their midst we may 
feel, as the king among the prophets felt, like another 
man. We all of us have been conscious, for moments at 
least, of a fresh joy of life and exhilaration of spirit in 
the glad prophetic spring-time of nature. May we 
never grow too dull of heart to feel the touch upon our 
spirit of the hopefulness of May ! 

I wish this morning to take my parable from nature 
in its present prophetic aspect ; I would look upon our 
whole life in this world as itself a brief prophetic season, 
like this month of May, in its hope of the full, ripe life 
to come. It seems to me that many reasons justify us 
in regarding our time upon this earth as a prophetic 
period of existence, a season full of prophesyings of 
better things to come. What can our human life be 
unless it be a book of prophecy ? We cannot under- 
stand many a strange line in it unless we read human 
life throughout as a book of prophecy. Life does speak 
266 



Life a Prophecy. 267 

ofteu with far-away, mystic, prophetic tongues. We can 
begin to divine the meaning of many a human life only 
as we study it as Ave would a chapter of sacred prophecy ; 
it is confusion and tragedy, if it be not a prophecy of 
the Lord. I shall proceed, accordingly, to mention 
some of the prophetic elements in our present life. 

First : Our own being is prophetic. Every man of us 
is himself a prophetic being. We are made and organ- 
ized for something more and better than as yet appears. 
We are inspired with the thought of the unseen and 
eternal. We have in us, and carry about daily with us, 
a sense of something beyond. Our personal being is an 
expectation of the creation waiting for the revealing of 
the sons of God. Each man of us has a prophecy of 
future rewards and punishments written in his own con- 
science. And does not human love have always hidden 
in its heart a prophetic hope of the future and its com- 
pletions? The word of the Lord still comes to men 
through their own conciences and hearts, saying. There 
is a higher law, and you have your birthright in a 
kingdom of righteousness and truth. Would you go 
seek for some new prophet of the Lord to declare to you 
the life beyond ? Listen to your own soul. Make 
silence within, and listen to your own better self. You 
are that prophet whom you seek. You walk this earth 
a king of nature, and a prophet of another world. You 
are chosen from your birth and called of God to be a 
witness to the higher order of spirit, and to live as an 
heir of the kingdom of God. 

Secondly : Our human relations are prophetic. WTiat 
I want just here to make intelligible is the fact, that our 



2 68 The Reality of Faith, 

common hmnan relations — the relations of the family, 
and the best and purest things of human friendship and 
social life — have at their root a divine life, are blossoms 
and fruits of an eternal Love, and, when rightly inter- 
preteted, are prophetic of the perfect relationships and 
the complete society of the kingdom of heaven. This is 
a profound yet simple truth, the reasons for belief in 
which I know not whether I can begin to put into words 
as they seem to me to exist in the most real human life ; 
yet if we cannot measure in definite speech the faith 
which life brings to us, or rather the faith which God 
through life brings to us, we may recognize the vital 
truth that human love, the purer, stronger, and deeper 
it is, does hide in its heart a more and more assured 
prophecy of some heavenly completion. 

You will at once admit that these relations of the 
family and of human society are of worth. They are a 
good for man. They reach back into some universal 
good for man ; they have their roots and their life, we 
believe, in something better and holier which was before 
them all — in something divine. Accept your family- 
relations and your human friendships as gifts of God, — 
nay, as revelations to you of what God in his fatherhood 
and the Son of God in his brotherhood is, — and then all 
these human relations through which God himself comes 
near to bless you, will grow doubly sacred to you. There 
is a presence of God also in them. They are of holy 
worth. Any sin against them, any violation of these 
sacred human relations, touches something divine. To 
sin against my brother-man is to sin against God. 
In his fatherhood, as the Scripture literally ren- 



Life a Prophecy. 269 

dered says, every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is 
named. 

We own at once in our hearts this sacred, ideal worth 
of these human relations. They are divine good with man 
and for man. Observe further in this connection how 
broken, partial, and tragic, often, these human relations 
and friendships seem in this world to be. They all of 
them suggest something which should be complete, holy, 
perfect ; and then they break off, and in the poor actu- 
ality of the present remain but suggestions of what 
should be. Our human relations seem in this world to 
have been worked out upon some plan of goodness just 
far enough, they seem to have been carried on in this 
life just long enough, to make us think of Avhat the 
perfect pattern might be, and to long often for its com- 
pletion. Our best earthly society is a partial, not a perfect 
good, a beginning of what might be, the consummation 
of no good thing. Often the family is rudely broken 
by death just at the season when all its relations of 
father, mother, brothers, sisters, are coming to their 
maturity, and the family in its completeness is just 
beginning to be realized. There is evidently eternal 
worth in such relations of life, but just as we begin to 
find it, we lose it. Those who made each other's lives 
so complete are no longer dwellers in the same world 
together. 

Love here has too often only the beginning of its 
good — the precious, yet too quickly broken fragment of 
its own blessing. Put then together in your thoughts 
these two facts — the self-evident worth of these human 
relations and friendships, and their present incomplete- 



270 The Reality of Faith. 

ness ; — and do you not see how through their partial 
good the prophecy of the Lord of life begins to come 
into our lives ? The earthly fragment which love has 
received was given as a promise of the Lord ; it was 
never meant as a completed thing. Tlie present, broken 
good is a divine suggestion to us of the perfect life in 
which all that is now fragmentary shall be made com- 
plete. We do not yet have the whole of any good. "VVe 
already, in other words, have so much given us from 
God in the family and our human relations, and their 
worth, that we have all riglit to trust that we shall in 
due time receive their completion. We shall reap in 
due season what the Lord himself has sown for us. 
The partial good is a present prediction in our lives and 
in our homes of the final perfect whole. All earthly, 
human good is evidence of a divine presence with us, 
and a promise or prophecy of the better things which 
are to come when God shall be all in all. The best and 
fairest human family, having its root and life in the 
Fatherhood of God, is as yet but in part ; it is as the 
bud of May upon the tree of life ; we see now only the 
bud, and its prophetic richness of color; when that 
which is perfect shall come, we shall know then, as now 
only the angels of God can know, for what heavenly 
fruition, for what perfect clusters of life eternal, the 
Christian families were given in these their earthly buds. 
I have not yet in these statements led you to lay 
hold, as one may, of the strong principle of reason 
underlying this prophetic interpretation of our present 
human relations. These statements rest upon the pro- 
phetic principle which we find in nature pervading all 



Life a Prophecy. 271 

growth, and pointing ever on from partial good, and 
lower types, towards the better things to come. The 
only difference is that when the geologist, or the biol- 
ogist, reads the record of progress and ascent of life 
upon this earth, he can now read the Scripture of nature 
backwards, and having before him in man's present 
form and brain a fulfilled prophecy of nature, he can 
easily interpret, reading backwards, the lower prophetic 
forms and types. What from the beginning upwards 
was one constant prophecy of man's coming is now our 
histor}^ But the Christian, when he now looks forward 
and thinks of the coming of the second man, even the 
Lord from heaven, has still to read the present pro- 
phetic signs and tendencies of things forwards by faith. 
Nevertheless, we proceed upon the same principle of 
reason whether we read the creation backward or for- 
ward; — that which is good, but which is in part, is 
always a sign and herald of that which is perfect, which 
is to come. All partial good is prophetic. That is a 
first principle of nature. This is also a great principle 
of faith. It is a profound principle, reaching, I must 
believe, to the bottom of all natural evolution, and 
yet simple as the hope which will not die in the heart 
of human sorrow. It is a principle of life so true, and 
60 strong to bear our faith, that you will allow me once 
more to endeavor to render this present deeply pro- 
phetic significance of human nature intelligible. 

Let me put it again in this way. You walk out into 
a garden or orchard, and you take in at a glance the 
present predictive aspect of the vegetation. Every 
green thing is a promise. The buds of May upon the 



272 The Reality of Faith, 

apple-trees promise the gathering up of the summer's 
rays into the rosy fruit of autumn. AVe might reason 
rightly in this way concerning the promise of the 
spring : That blade of wheat, that opening bud, we 
know, is a living thing. It comes from out some secret 
of life — we should say from out some divine secret of 
life. In comparison with the dead earth it has higher 
worth. Being a thing of life, it is a thing of worth. 
As compared with the lifeless soil it is a better thing — a 
good — some higher thing, beginning to be on earth. 
Then this good thing, this gift to the fields in their 
verdure of something better than dead earth, is also a 
growing good. The verdure is not a stationary thing, a 
fixed color left once for all upon the face of the earth. 
Life is an increasing, a growing good. There is in the 
life of the fields and in the tree-tops an onward move- 
ment of nature, a perceptible progress from day to day 
of a good already given towards something better to 
Qome. There are in this budding, swelling life manifest 
tendencies of nature forwards. Nature is now evidently 
looking forward to meet some greater blessing from the 
sun. So now every bush is a prophet. But, you 
remind me, this predictive aspect of the spring-time 
we Ivuow and take for granted without reasoning, 
whenever we see a bud of life, because we have gone 
many times in our experience along with nature in the 
course of her Reasons, and beheld her prophecies of May 
fulfilled in the ripe colors of October. But what man 
of us has seen, or knows, the firstfruits of the resurrec- 
tion ? We have verified over and over again the prophe- 
cies of nature in the spring-time, but who has come to 



Life a Prophecy. 273 



us with a positive verification of this present prophecy, 
as you call it, of human nature ? We do not see on 
earth the perfect fruition of the human family upon 
God's tree of life. Such, then, I allow, is the difference 
between the spring-time prophecy of nature, and the 
spring-time prophecy of our humanity; — we have 
verified the one by its fruits ; we must wait for 
the final verification of the other. But that is all the 
difference. We simply wait for the full verification of 
our faith in the harvest-time of the Lord. That is all. 
The principle of reasoning is the same. The truth of 
the prophetic import of the beginnings of any divine 
good in the creation is the same, whether we read the 
growth of nature backw^ards in our experience, or read 
the gro^i:h of human nature forwards in our hope of 
immortality and the perfect society which shall be. 
Divest yourselves for the moment in your imagination, 
if possible, of your knowledge of the harvest, and con- 
ceive that you are looking with an inquiring eye upon 
the first May whose leafy life you have ever seen. Tell 
me, without experience of the harvest, would not nature 
now have to the eye of the understanding an air of 
expectation ? Observe the buds to-day, and to-morrow. 
Note the beginnings of something of higher worth than 
the earthy elements at the root of every living thing, 
Mark the signs of an onward movement, the silent 
march of the mighty forces of life onward, the partial 
yet advancing victories of life in the fields and the 
orchards ! Would there not be in all this expectation 
of nature enough to warrant the hope, the belief, the 
certain conviction in your own mind, although you had 

18 



2 74 ^'^^^ Reality of Faith, 

never seen a fruit-tree standing with ripe apples in the 
rich autumnal light, that there must be some blessing 
waiting in the after days for the earth, some fulfillment 
to come of such apparent promise ? And suppose fur- 
ther as you were pondering these things and asking, 
what is the meaning of the beginnings of good and the 
strivings of nature in every bud ? what does this fact 
of growth prophesy? — suppose some one had come 
to you, — some man whose face made you trust him at a 
glance, — and he had taken his seat beside you on the 
green grass, talked to you of the harvest, and told you 
that he had seen the full glory of which the fairness 
delighting your eye is but the beginning; suppose he 
had pointed to the vine before you and said ; " Where 
now through the rough bark you see those breaking tips 
of green shall hang in the harvest-time a cluster of ripe 
grapes ; that blossom beginning, as though half ashamed 
of being seen, to open its heart of color to the sun, shall 
some day be a perfect peach ; " — conceive he had con- 
tinued thus to depict the fruits of the life which you see 
only in its bud, yet in words so colored with the imagery 
of the harvest which you had never seen, that you could 
but half understand his meanings ; — would you not at 
once believe his interpretation of the prophecy of the 
spring? would you not say. That is natural, that is 
what I sliould expect ; although I can hardly imagine 
it, some such glory yet to be revealed nature evidently 
is waiting for with this glad, earnest expectation of May? 
And thus the Lord of the harvest has come to us. 
He sits by our side, and talks in his divine way to us 
children, who have not yet seen the harvest, of his 



Life a Prophecy. 275 

heavenly fruitions. So to us in the midst of these 
prophecies of our lives and our homes, to us among our 
opening friendships, with our children and our hopes, 
the Lord of life has come ; and although he has many 
things to say which we cannot understand now, though 
we are but children trying to learn what shall be here- 
after from such things as now appear, he says to us, — 
I know ; I speak that which I have seen ; — and his 
words are confirmed to our reasons and our hearts by 
all which we have seen and know of the beginnings of 
good in this world, and of the worth of the best things 
in our own lives, by the whole prophetic aspect, in short, 
of our human nature and our human hearts. Thus 
Christ's witness to God and heaven answers the pro- 
phetic history of nature and humanity, and the witness 
of the two agreeing in one is the assurance of our faith. 
Only we do not, we cannot, realize how prophetic to 
Jesus himself everything in our human lives and homes 
must have seemed. From his heavenly experience he 
could read downwards and backwards what is as yet all 
prophecy to us. He stood as One looking upon us and 
our history of sin from the other end of God's eternal 
purpose ; as the student of nature among us men now 
stands looking back from a man's knowledge down the 
course of nature through the past of this earth. So to 
Jesus everything which we are and do had its worth and 
reality as, judged from eternity, it is our preparation for 
what shall be. All our fragmentary virtue and happi- 
ness were of value to him as he saw our present, partial 
good bound up in the final whole of love to God and 
man. All our discipline and pain of growth were to 



276 The Reality of Faith. 

him endurable, and to be welcomed, as he saw the life of 
humanity in its perfect fruit in the new society of the 
kingdom of heaven. And the disciples, catching his 
prophetic spirit, looked forward through all trial and 
seeming success of evil to the new heavens and the new 
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. So they could 
suffer gladly for the hope of the Gospel. 

There is a third prophetic element in this present life, 
to which I should now allude. We have thus far con- 
sidered the fact that man himself in his own being is 
essentially a prophet of the Lord upon this earth, and 
also the truth that our human relations in their eternal 
worth, but present incompleteness, all bear witness of some- 
thing diviner to come in which they shall be made per- 
fect. A further prophetic aspect of our life here we 
may find in the present relation of our spirits to outward 
things. 

Not to be allured just now too far afield by a subject 
in which our thoughts may wander endlessly, let me put 
the substance of what should be said at this point in 
this wise. We have in these bodies a partial good. 
Our present embodiment in nature is a good, but it is 
not a complete and permanent good. The union of soul 
and body we can readily understand is a gift of God ; 
but it is not yet altogether good. Our embodiment is 
good so far as it goes, and for a little time. It is the 
best thing on this earth ; there is nothing among all 
material things more wonderful than the brain of man. 
The stars in their courses, the infinite net-work of 
attractions which constitute the order of the heavens, 
excite our wonder and awe ; but are they so marvel- 



Life a Prophecy, 277 

lous manifestations of creative wisdom and power as 
the living centres and constellations of nerve-cells, and 
the balanced forces and ethereal fineness and complexity 
of the processes which the spirit that is in man finds 
given him in the organism and harmonies of his brain, 
for the purposes of recording and comparing his 
thoughts, and executing his free volitions ? Man him- 
self in his present embodiment is the consummation of 
nature, and the last wonder of the creation. But, never- 
theless, this body is not enough for the spirit of man. 
You can look in thought farther than the eye can see. 
You can be in the spirit where you cannot will your 
body. This present body is good, but not good enough 
for the diviner spirit which is in man. It is a gift of 
God ; it brings us into immediate correspondence and 
unity with the whole mighty world of sense and sound. 
It brings nature to the door of intelligence. It brings 
fragrance and beauty and light to the presence of spirit. 
Well may we exclaim with the poet-philosopher Herder, 
" Embodiment is the last of God's thoughts in nature!" 
Nevertheless we die. We are not yet perfectly embodied. 
We are not yet in final and complete harmony of spirit 
with the world of things. We have in these bodies 
God's thought of what is to be our perfect relation to 
things, carried just far enough to make us see how good 
it is, and how much still remains to be accomplished, 
before it shall be finished in the perfect embodiment of 
a spirit. Body is a gift of God to spirit, but not yet in 
these mortal bodies has God's whole gift been bestowed, 
his whole thought and work of our embodiment been 
brought to its completion. Our present embodiment, in 



278 The Reality of Faith. 

other words, is prophetic — wonderfully and profoundly 
prophetic of what shall be. Yes, in these bodies so 
wonderfully made, yet so incomplete, we have nature's 
prophecy of the resurrection, and the earthly preparation 
for the perfect, spiritual body which shall be. In these 
mortal bodies, in which we begin to live and to be 
formed for immortality, the earnest expectation of the 
creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. 

If to any of you, therefore, the Christian doctrine of 
the resurrection of the dead, and the final consummation 
of all things in the new heavens and the new earth, seems 
a thing incredible, I grant that it is beyond the definite 
grasp of our imagination, and that the nature of the 
spiritual body may be to us a thing beyond conception, 
as the fruit of the autumn would be inconceivable to the 
child who, having never seen a ripe apple, holds for the 
first time in its life an apple-blossom in its hand. But 
I do insist that the prophetic nature and law of things — 
the prophetic significance of these present bodies in their 
temporary adaptations to our spiritual uses — is not a 
fact beyond our knowledge, or contrary to any reason ; I 
hold that the earnest expectation of the whole creation 
from the first organic cell up to the brain of man waits 
for the revealing of the sous of God ; I would claim that 
the Christian doctrine of the resurrection and the con- 
summation of nature, as laid down in St. PauPs chapter 
of inspired interpretation of God's thought, is in accord- 
ance with the present prophetic nature of things, and 
that we can and should believe in the word of God 
which confirms the whole up-look and on-look of the 
creation ; and we may wait, therefore, in the patience 



Life a Prophecy. 279 

of hope for the glory which the heart of man indeed can- 
not conceive, but which shall be made known in us who 
are risen in Christ, when that which is perfect shall come. 

I leave at this point this great argument from the 
prophecy of the Scriptures of nature, conscious that it is 
stronger than any words of mine have made appear, but 
hoping that, at least, what has been said may help you to 
hear more clearly the word of divine promise coming to 
you through your experiences of this present life. These 
best gifts, these most precious things of life, which are 
left with us often just long enough for us to begin to 
appreciate their worth, and then are taken from us, are 
indeed words of prophecy to our hearts. God^s own 
prophecies of eternal life are sent to us through the best 
and purest of present things. Your griefs are true 
prophets of the Lord. Your most sacred memories of 
the past, and its worth, are the Lord's prophecies to 
your souls. Nay, the whole history of redemption thus 
far, from Moses to Christ, from Christ to the last regen- 
erated soul, is the prophecy, growing and broadening 
with the years, of the kingdom of God which we pray 
may come. 

If we are learning to look thus upon all things in our 
present lives as prophetic, we shall find in this view of 
life a world of cheer and courage. It causes every day a 
vast difference in our feeling and heart for life, if our 
Christian faith makes a prophetic May-time of our brief 
season in this world. When we sit musing over the 
things which are past and gone, it makes all the differ- 
ence between the Pagan sense of loss, or the Christian 
sense of gain through life, whether we read the chapters 



28o The Reality of Faith. 

of our book of life simply as history, or also as prophecy. 
Many a chapter in our past which is broken, strange 
fateful, if read as history only, becomes another thing 
when we interpret it as prophecy. 

There was once in your life a happy chapter of child- 
hood which is all past and gone now. If this world be 
mere history, and our life a mere earthly plot — all its 
romance over at death — then that chapter of childhood 
is indeed so much remembered loss. But if this present 
season and system of things is, on the other hand, as the 
spring-time of the ripe universe which is to be, and if 
our life here is one prophetic providence; then that 
chapter of childhood is not simply a memory of bright- 
ness, and happy careless days ; it is a type of the true 
childhood ol the kingdom of heaven. That other chap- 
ter of a completed struggle and trial — that memory of 
endeavor and disappointment — is not simply the record 
of a wasted strength and a broken hope ; it is the record 
written upon the character of the soul of the purpose and 
dutifulness which shall find their fulfillment in the strength 
and freedom of the world to come. And that chapter 
of happiness — that chapter of love and home which began 
to read like a beginning of some story of a better world, 
and which came to a sudden end in the mystery of death, 
— if read as history, is indeed but the first act of an 
interrupted drama, a broken melody, a tragedy of life ; — 
and to remember is to mourn ! But, my friends, read 
that prelude of love and home as a prophetic song ! 
Then to remember Avill be to hope ! " I looked behind to 
find my past, and lo ! it had gone before.'' You had such 
companionship, such support, such cheer overflowing the 



Life a Prophecy. 281 

hours in that happy past ? Think of those things. Be 
not saddened by keeping them in your thoughts. Men- 
tion on every fit occasion the names of those who have 
gone before. Those happy memories are the Lord's own 
promises of eternal life in your hearts. Come to your 
church, and delight in thinking of those whom now we 
cannot see in their former familiar places. God has 
given us the memory of the just as the sure word of 
prophecy of that final, blest society in which they with 
us shall be made perfect. Let your eyes rest in joy and 
in peace, morning and evening, upon that picture of a 
vanished face — upon that better living picture which you 
carry safe in your own heart. That picture is not a 
memory merely ; it is a prophecy. ^^ He is not here," 
said the angel in the tomb of the Lord who was the first- 
fruits of the resurrection. " Behold, he goeth before you 
into Galilee; there shall ye see him." Walk still with 
glad, springing step through these fresh May fields ; gaze 
with happy eyes upon the beauty of earth and sky ; let 
the sunshine find your hearts still open as a child's, 
although now you may walk alone where but yesterday 
you walked with another — although now you may be 
Hearing the close of your little life here, and in old age 
the world begins to grow lonely around you; you hear 
indeed only echoes of other days — you have but the 
shadows of memory for the realities with which once you 
lived — it is silence and mystery around you where once 
were the clear hopeful voices of life — and you cannot 
understand ; — but think what means this silence of earth 
which God is making around the heart of old age ? what 
means this emptiness of the present world ? what mean 



282 The Reality of Faith. 

these echoing voices of the past ? Is it not all prophecy? 
It is the silence of earth in which the soul begins to listen 
for the new song of the great multitude ; it is the sense 
of loss in which God enlarges the heart for the gain of 
death. The silence, the loneliness, — what is it but God's 
word to old age, hushing the soul in expectancy for the 
revealing of the sons of God ? 

My friends, we shall be far happier, stronger, and 
better, if we are willing, whether in youth or age, to 
make one sacred prophetic Scripture of our life here. 
What the Old Testament is to the New ; what Isaiah 
desiring to see the things which were to be revealed was 
to St. John leaning upon the bosom of the Lord ; — such 
our present is to our hereafter, our life now to the glory 
which shall be revealed. 

Let us all — the young and the old — build our lives 
into this hope of the Gospel, and seek in all dutifulness 
and consecration of spirit to the Lord Christ so to live 
from day to day, that when this book of the prophecy 
of our earthly life shall be finished, and God shall open 
it, and read it with us from beginning to end at the last 
great day, the fulfillment of it may not be in*retributions, 
and eternal death, but in righteousness, joy, and peace, 
in the Holy Ghost. 



XIX. 

THE LAST JUDGMENT THE CHRISTIAN JUDG- 
MENT. 

"Noin iz ilt juijjgmmt of ti^is toorlii: ttoto si&all ti^e priiui of t\ii3 
hmilh it tdiSt out." — ^John. xii. 31. 

" %nti f)£, h^itn \)t is tomt, in ill wnbut tf)c fcoorlir in nspwt of 5tTt, aniJ 
of risT)ttou0iu55, aixlJ of ju&jgm^nt : of Bin, "budcust t^^j idiiht not 
on mc ; of rt'stttoujjittsjs?, iwaiueft 3E 30 to tf)i jFatfju, anii 2^ itfiollir 
m« no mon ; of ju&smnit, iwaujffi i\}Z prinxt of tins toorllJ f)att i«n 
ju&stli." — ^JOHN. xvi. 8-1 1. 

According to the Scriptures, Satan was not seen falling 
like lightning from heaven before Christ sent his disciples 
to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand. 
According to the Scriptures, Satan was not finally judged 
before he had opposed himself hopelessly against Christ. 
" Now," said Christ, " is the judgment of this world : 
now shall the prince of this world be cast out." 

According to our traditional understanding, Satan was 
from the beginning an absolutely diabolical and con- 
demned spirit, who had been cast down from heaven 
before he took part in the sin of this world. But one 
of the earliest Biblical notices of Satan, written hundreds 
of years before Milton's Paradise Lost, represents him as 
appearing with the sons of God before the Lord, taking 
his stand upon an apparent principle of justice, and con- 
sequently finding a hearing before the Lord. In the 

283 



284 The Reality of Faith. 

book of Job, and throughout the Old Testament, Satan 
is not yet portrayed as the enemy who has become abso- 
lutely hardened in hate, and hurled himself in hopeless 
hostility against God. The Satan of the Old Testament 
seems to have still " one foot in heaven." He appears, 
not as opposing himself against God, but at first as the 
tempter and accuser of men ; next, a step lower down 
than where he stood in the book of Job, he is seen in the 
vision of Zechariah as opposing the high priest, or the 
theocracy represented by the high priest, for whom the 
angel of the Lord pleads. 

The Satan of the book of Job shows traits which are 
not altogether unlike certain evil dispositions of our 
human nature. He appears as a tale-bearer and sower 
of suspicions among the sons of God. He uses truths 
of religion as the vehicles of his own hurtful dispositions. 
He makes a principle of righteousness a means of heart- 
less persecution. Somewhat later in the Biblical history 
of Satan we find that this habit of suspicion, misrepre- 
sentation, and partial truthfulness, has become more 
reckless and wicked, and in the vision of Zechariah the 
Lord who had permitted him to try the faithfulness of 
Job, rebukes him for his slanderous opposition to the 
High Priest. 

The Satan of the Old Testament seems to have been a 
reactionary spirit. He takes his stand upon a partial 
truth, or an incomplete good, to prevent the realization 
of the perfect good, and to keep men from coming to 
the full knowledge of the truth. Thus, in the garden, 
the serpent represents the claims of natural right and 
natural science against the divine commandment and the 



Last yiidgme7it — Christian Jitdgment. 285 

revealal way of life. Again in Job, Satan is solicitous 
for an uprightness of simple obedience to God^s law, and 
fears that Job's piety is merely the result of God's favor, 
and not a perfect submission to the law. 

The evil has, indeed, no standing-ground in this world 
except upon some good which God has already made. 
The lie fastens always upon some truth ; the Satanic power 
seeks to use the lower good against the higher blessing, 
and the partial truth against the growing knowledge. 
Satan takes his stand upon a reactionary and false con- 
servatism in his accusations of the brethren, and he 
comes also among the sons of God to oppose the true 
progress of God's purpose of good. 

The evil one of the New Testament is a more fallen 
being than the Satan of the Old Testament. He has 
been growing worse as God has been showing himself 
more gracious. As the light of revelation has brightened, 
the sin of this world has grown blacker. At first the 
evil one was opposed to man ; now he cannot withhold 
himself from tempting God in the Son of man. Once 
he assumed to represent certain principles of righteous- 
ness, and pretended to be a servant of Jehovah ; now he 
hardens himself against God's revealed will, and seeks 
to overcome the anointed Christ. The devil, according 
to the Biblical representation, has been growing worse, 
and becoming more malignant, as God's purpose of grace 
in Christ has been coming out more clearly and grandly 
in history ; and now, before God manifest in the flesh, 
he is seen to be the evil one, the enemy, the prince of 
darkness, that wicked one who has no part in the king- 
dom of God, the father of lies, who is now fully dis- 



286 The Reality of Faith, 

closed in his hatred to the truth, and shown to have 
been a murderer from the beginning. So Satan is 
finally manifested and judged by his final opposition to 
Christ. He ends all possible opportunity for himself 
by his enmity to God in Christ. He shuts himself 
wholly out from heaven by entering as a spirit of hate 
into the heart of the betrayer of the Christ. Consent- 
ing to the crucifixion of Love, he has henceforth not a 
single right, or truth, or principle of justice left, by 
which as of old he can claim a hearing among the sons 
of God. What might have been, if, even at the eleventh 
hour, Satan had thrown himself upon the mercy of 
Jesus Christ ; if, instead of taking Jesus up into a high 
mountain, and exhausting his malignant art in the 
attempt to deceive the Son of God, he had cast himself 
upon his mercy, accepting as his desert God's condem- 
nation, and praying for forgiveness from the Lamb of 
God ; — concerniog this Jesus has not told us, and we do 
not know. But this fact does appear clearly and dis- 
tinctly in the Biblical history of Satan, — he was finally 
condemned, he was cast out as beyond all redemption, 
when it was evident that he had hardened his will 
against the final and perfect manifestation of God in 
Jesus Christ. Job had seen Satan among the sons of 
God before the Lord ; the prophet still later had beheld 
him accusing the high priest before the angel of the 
Lord ; — Jesus said, " I beheld Satan fallen as lightning 
from heaven ! " As Christ foretold the coming of his 
hour, knowing that his love must needs judge the 
Satanic hate which would crucify him, he said, " Now 
is the judgment of this world : now shall the prince of 



Last yudgment — Christian Judgment. 287 

this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from 
the earth, will draw all men unto me." Satan's day is 
over. He has proved himself to be Satanic beyond 
divine redemption before the Holy One of God. This 
world, also, upon the revelation and judgment of its 
principle of sin before the cross of Christ, passes into a 
new, and for it, likewise final era. Henceforth its pre- 
liminary trial, and provisional judgment by the law, are 
over ; since the Lord was crucified, its last day of Chris- 
tian trial and judgment has begun. "If I had not 
come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin : but 
now they have no cloak for their sin." The Christian 
dispensation of the Holy Ghost is, and morally must be, 
the beginning of the end. This day of grace is the 
season before the harvest in which our history is ripen- 
ing for its judgment. Before pronouncing that word 
of judgment upon Satan, — " Now is the prince of this 
world cast out," — God had waited until Christ had 
come, and Satan had condemned himself before the 
Christ; surely God will be as patient with men, and 
none shall receive his final judgment before the law of 
nature, or from Moses' seat, but by the word of the Son 
of man. Christ's coming and speaking brings life to 
its crisis ; the world, Jesus plainly declares, " had not 
had sin " — final, irretrievable sin — in the state of nature 
before Christ came. All shall receive final Christian 
judgment — we must all stand before the judgment-seat 
of Christ. Every man is to be finally judged in view 
of Christ, and his personal relation to Christ. Thus 
Jesus said, as he looked forward to his hour, and to the 
new world-age which should begin from his death and 



288 The Reality of Faith. 

resurrection : " The Comforter, when he is come, shall 
convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, 
and of judgment : of sin because they believe not on 
me ; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and 
ye behold me no more ; of judgment, because the prince 
of this world hath been judged." 

Thus far I have followed up to this solemn text the 
Biblical teaching concerning the development, and judg- 
ment through Christ's coming, of the principle and 
power of sin. It appears that the Satanic principle or 
power in our history grows more diabolical, forfeits all 
claim upon the forbearance of God, and becomes fiilly 
ripe for the judgment under the final revelation of God's 
love in Christ. No prophet before Christ could have 
said, and Christ himself could say only in anticipation 
of his hour of crucifixion, and his final glory: "Now is 
the judgment of this world." " The Spirit shall convict 
the world in respect of sin because they believe not on 
me ; and of righteousness, because I go to my Father ; 
and of judgment, because the prince of this world hath 
been judged." 

Thus far the Scriptural teaching is definite. Until 
Christ came, Satan had still, as it were, " one foot in 
heaven." Sin comes to its final judgment before the 
cross of Christ. Sin is to receive its final doom from 
God only as it shall have proved itself to be absolutely 
sinful, or incapable of redemption, before the Cross of 
atoning love. 

I am not arguing this proposition now from reason, 
nor from our Christian sense of the judgment which we 
might expect from God ; I have been showing that in 



Last Judgment — Christian yudgment, 289 

the Scriptures sin does not assume its final form and 
permanence, and Satan even is not seen to be utterly 
Satanic, until the day of grace comes, and Christ is cruci- 
fied, and goes to the Father. The same Biblical truth 
appears in the parable of the husbandmen who were not 
cast out until, after having rejected messenger after 
messenger from the king, at last they slew his beloved 
son. Then forbearance had nothing left to give, and they 
were destroyed. 

Thus far the Scriptures. If we find in this Biblical 
representation a principle of far-reaching ramification, 
although it may seem hazardous for us in some direc- 
tions to follow it up and out to its last consequences, we 
should not on that account let go the grasp of our theol- 
ogy upon a great truth of the divine judgment which 
has its firm roots in the Bible. It will prove more 
perilous to faith and to all evangelistic effort, if we do 
not gain and keep a strong confidence in the essential 
Christianity of God's method and purpose in the final 
judgment of sin. ^7e should not suffer either our hopes 
or our fears, our prejudices or our traditions, to interpret 
any Scripture for us. And there is hardly a truth or 
principle of the Gospel which may not be applied — 
which in some one's logical use of it has not been 
abused — to the hurt and peril of souls. Thus the Scrip- 
tural teaching of the necessity of regeneration by the 
Holy Spirit may easily be so preached as to restrain 
human effort for the conversion of souls. The doctrine 
of predestination, or the expectation of the second coming 
of Christ, might logically be laid as a check upon mis- 
sionary endeavor ; so also the half-truth of a moral trial 

19 



290 The Reality of Faith. 

and judgment of the heathen under the light of nature 
and through conscience might be dragged by logical 
inference into the way of Christ's commandment to 
preach the Gospel to every creature. But any Biblical 
truth or principle should be welcomed by us so far as 
we can understand it, and trusted by us to take care of 
its own proper consequences. Our caution and our fear 
need not concern the practical results in the world of 
any truth ; our only anxiety should be lest we ourselves 
miss the Scriptural truth in its largeness and in its integ- 
rity, or stumble in our own short-sighted and unchari- 
table applications of it. Hence we should not hesitate 
to accept this truth of the Gospel that all men are to be 
finally judged by their personal relation to God in Christ, 
and that now the Holy Spirit brings the crisis of char- 
acter and the beginning of the end to all souls to whom 
it witnesses of God in his Christian revelation of his love. 
According to the Scriptures, and by no remote inference 
from many texts, the principle of the last judgment is 
the revelation of human character in the light of Christ ; 
— the final judgment shall be for all souls a Christian 
judgment — a judgment before nothing less searching 
and decisive than God manifest in Christ. 

I do not disguise from myself the fact that this simple 
Biblical principle of the final judgment of sin through 
Christ, and man's relation to the supreme revelation of 
God in Christ, is a principle of very wide and deep theo- 
logical application, having possibly in it the power of a 
better theodicy, or vindication of God's ways towards 
man, than our New England theology has as yet attained 
by means of its governmental maxims ; but the infer- 



Last yudgment — Christian yudg^nent, 291 

ences from this Biblical truth would require a volume 
rather than a sermon for their consideration ; my present 
object is practical and personal. I am not preaching 
here to antediluvians, to whom God was revealed chiefly 
as the Almighty Sovereign ; nor to infants whose life 
has not yet developed into actual moral personality ; nor 
to idiots whose souls nature holds still half-formed until 
death shall give them birth in spiritual freedom ; — I am 
preaching to men and women who have been permitted 
to live in the day of grace, in this present, accepted time 
of the Lord, and whose characters are forming under 
the light of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. You 
and I are living, and deciding what we will be, in this 
world-period which takes its date from the birth of Jesus 
Christ — this world-age through which the Son of God 
waits expecting until all enemies shall be put under his 
feet — ^this world-age in which his Gospel is to be preached 
to every creature, and which shall end in his final coming 
to deliver up his kingdom of grace to the Father — this 
present world-age which, because it is the day of the Son 
of man, is also the last day of the world before the day 
of judgment — this Christian world-age which is, as no 
age of the world could have been before Christ ascended, 
the dispensation of the Holy Ghost, the age of the 
presence everywhere of the Spirit of Truth : and now, in 
the preaching of the Cross, in the Christian church and 
its sacraments, by the means of grace, and through the 
accumulating evidences of the Gospel of redemption and 
the growing power of Christianity in the world, the Holy 
Spirit is already convicting the world of sin, of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment : of sin, because sin in this world- 



292 The Reality of Faith. 

age, if it persists, must harden itself against God's love 
into unbelief of heart in his revealed grace ; of righteous- 
ness, because through the exaltation of Christ to the right 
hand of the majesty on high God reveals the perfect 
righteousness, even the righteousness of love in which 
He has willed from eternity to conduct this universe ; of 
judgment, because the principle of sin has been laid 
bare, and its absolute unworthiness and guilt brought 
out in its rejection of the truth that would have led it 
to repentance, and the love that would have taken it in 
forgiveness to its own pure heart. 

The application of this Scripture is one of solemn sig- 
nificance to ourselves ; — we are living in the last days, 
and there is no world-age of fuller revelation of God's 
eternal purpose of grace to follow this age of the Holy 
Spirit. Behind us is the age of the creative wisdom of 
God ; behind us is the age of the law and the covenant 
of Jehovah ; behind us is the age of Messianic promise. 
Christianity is the latter day to which prophets looked 
forward ; Christianity, or the Messianic kingdom, was 
as the end of the world to the people of Israel. And 
what to them was to be the promised end, is behind us ; 
all those ages of preparation the purpose of God in Christ 
Jesus has passed through; the times of ignorance at 
which God winked are gone by ; the childhood of the 
world is passed ; man came to full moral age and respon- 
sibility in the day of Christ. Behind us lie all these 
times of preparation, and those provisional seasons of 
the law and its schooling ; and behind us, also, is the age 
of Christ's humiliation and finished work of redemption ; 
and, long since, the day of Pentecost was fully come ; — 



Last Jiidgment — Christian judgment. 293 

now is the accepted time, when all the Gentiles to whom 
the Gospel shall be preached must meet Him by whom 
finally all are to be judged ; now is the accepted time of 
human history; now is the day of salvation for all 
people. Behind us are those preliminary ages, those days 
of divine preparation for our salvation, and before us is 
the end — ^that great day of the harvest of history ; before 
us is the crisis which Christ, because he is the Saviour 
of the world, must bring ; before us the possibility of 
the great decision ; before us the open gate of the mercy 
of the Lord, and the necessity of determining whether or 
not we will have hearts to enter the kingdom of heaven ; — 
and, beyond our decision of character, for Christ or 
against him, follows the final judgment of grace ! 

This fact, consequently, that we are living beyond the 
preparatory ages and provisional institutions of God's 
plan of history, in these latter days whose end is the 
final judgment, is a truth which well may arouse the 
indifferent, and which should make us all realize the 
great privilege, and the equally great responsibility, of 
our present opportunity to gain a Christian character for 
eternity. 

I proceed, therefore, to call your attention to some 
ways in which this truth of the Christian judgment now 
lays hold of our lives. I ask you to notice right here 
that I am bringing to you no mere theological specula- 
tion ; neither does the personal point of the truth which 
I wish to enforce depend upon any doubtful question 
concerning the future life. We are standing upon a 
Biblical truth, \az., that this is the day of the Lord, and 
that the day of Christ as man's Redeemer is the last day 



294 '^^^ Reality of Faith. 

of human history which ends in the final judgment, and 
from the basis of this truth of the Bible, in view of this 
final age of the world, I shall now urge only such 
considerations as may be drawn directly from the facts, 
and are capable of verification to a large extent in the 
experience of men here and now. 

First, then, I would say, in this dispensation of the 
Holy Spirit, every man and woman must stand or fall 
alone — each one for himself. It has not always been so 
on earth ; it may not be so in God's judgment of mercy 
with all classes and conditions of men now ; but it is so 
with us. Of old time the child of the Hebrew parent 
hardly had his individual rights and responsibility ; the 
children were visited with the punishment of the father's 
transgressions ; the unit of life, the unit by which God's 
temporal judgments in the early history of Israel must 
be measured, was not the individual, but the family. The 
innocent must often suffer with the guilty; whole fami- 
lies — ^wonien and children and slaves, — whole tribes and 
peoples must be sacrificed in the wars of the Jews, during 
those preliminary and preparatory judgments of our 
world-history of sin and death. Such was the early 
military necessity of providence. But it is not so now. 
Since Christ came, the Spirit of God deals with souls more 
directly, personally, and individually. IN^o priesthood 
intervenes ; men need not go up to Jerusalem to worship. 
God's Spirit is in all places, and, wherever the Gospel is 
preached, men may choose to obey or disobey the word 
of the Lord which comes to them in the name of Christ 
as the truth of the Spirit for their own souls. Of old 
time the hopes even of the most pious Israelites were 



Last yudgment — Christian yitdgment. 295 

bound up in the expectation of the people of Israel. 
Only as members of the theocracy could the Messianic 
glory become theirs ; it was the nation that was to be 
glorified, and the individual should receive of its honor 
and glory only in and through his connection by birth 
and circumcision, in faith, with the kingdom of Israel. 
But Christ has individualized grace. He creates, indeed, 
a new society of souls. But now through no external 
observance may we hope for part in his kingdom. We 
must be born again. We cannot depend upon any out- 
ward fulfillment of the law and the covenant — upon 
no legal righteousness ; — no one can be finally blessed 
because of any connection with any other men, with any 
chosen family, or with any line of promise. Since Christ 
brought the sin of this world to its judgment by his 
presence on earth, every man of us must meet personally 
the crisis of character, and stand or fall for himself 
before God. Christ by his coming to men calls men 
ever to themselves ; they cannot go away from him mere 
moral children ; he calls to a decision, a personal decision ; 
the soul comes to full moral age before Jesus Christ, and 
chooses its own life. And every time the word of the 
Spirit is brought home to us through Christ, we become 
by our personal response riper for the last judgment. 
So, then, under the dispensation of the Holy Ghost in 
w^hich we are living, every one must give an account 
of himself. We cannot go into the kingdom of 
heaven as the Israelites might have hoped to go up to 
Mount Zion, into the Messianic kingdom, by families 
and by tribes ; we must go alone — as individual souls 
—every one in the narrow way — each in the determina- 



296 The Reality of Faith, 

tion of his own heart, and to give an account of himself 
to his God. 

Secondly, all of us who are living in the knowledge 
of the Gospel, and in this dispensation of the Holy- 
Spirit, are forming our characters and ripening for 
judgment in view of the divinest motives to goodness. 
No one of us can grow to manhood now, and live, 
and die, as though Jesus Christ had never dwelt 
among men revealing the Father, as though Christ 
had not been crucified, condemning by his death the 
sin of the world. The life of Jesus Christ is as much 
a fact in our lives as the sun is a fact in our skies, and 
no man, by merely choosing not to regard it, can 
make the present fact of the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
cease to exist for him. The light is shining now — 
the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world; and though we would hide from it, 
we cannot conduct our business in this Christian era, 
we cannot live a day now, as though the sun of right- 
eousness had not risen, as though there had never been 
a Christ on this earth from God in heaven. It is 
morally impossible, in a land girded and studded with 
Christian churches, for any intelligent man to grow 
up and live without meeting before him in his own 
path, and more than once, the form of the Son of man 
— without being obliged, whether consciously or half 
consciously, yet really, to take some personal posi- 
tion towards Christ and his cross. As matter of 
obvious fact, God has so made the life and the death 
of Christ a part of modern history, and an essential 
element in the life of the world in which we live, 



Last yudgme7it — Christian judgment. 297 

that it would be impossible to conceive that any of 
us could go from any place in this country up through 
death to the bar of a just and omniscient God, and 
be fairly and thoroughly judged by Him, without the 
question being asked as the most decisive question 
of our destiny, What account, in the plan and pur- 
pose of your earth-life did you take of Jesus Christ ? 
What, in the conduct of your life, did you do with 
this Jesus which is called the Christ ? 

Thirdly, in this world-age of the Holy Spirit before 
the day of judgment, we are forming our characters 
under the most searching and decisive tests. Con- 
science is the first judge of man ; obedience to con- 
science is, so far as it goes, a determination of char- 
acter. The light of nature is undoubtedly light; it 
brings out distinctions of colors, good and evil, in 
human hearts. Conscience pronounces sin worthy of 
punishment ; the light of nature is sufficient to reveal 
the insufficiency of our own righteousness. But, under 
the law of conscience alone, no man is, or can be, put 
beyond the pale of possible gracious redemption. Char- 
acter, under the light of nature alone, cannot become 
absolutely hardened against mercy, and pass, by a natu- 
ral process only, beyond the moral possibility of super- 
natural redemption. According to the Scriptures only 
the sin against the Holy Ghost — the sin of utter rejec- 
tion of the last, fullest revelation of God — ^the sin 
against the Spirit sent to plead wdth the world from 
the cross of Christ, — that alone is the sin for which 
prayer can no more be made — the sin which hath 
never forgiveness either in this world or the world to 



298 The Reality of Faith. 

come. For all previous sin — for all the sins of the 
ages before the cross — Jesus could pray as he gave up 
the ghost, "Father, forgive them; for they know not 
what they do." But now, under the dispensation of 
the Holy Spirit, sin is not only neglect of the light of 
nature, not only transgression of the law ; but it may be 
a turning from goodness itself, and rejection of the 
revealed God. In proportion as the atoning love of 
God is made known, and put away from a soul, sin is 
also striving against the Spirit of God. As God reveals 
more fully and more gloriously the principles of his 
righteousness and the fullness of his love in Christianity, 
in that proportion does the sin of the world grow worse 
and more condemnable, and persistence in sin approaches 
the rejection of all that God can do to redeem a soul. 
To all to whom the love of God and the unspeakable 
attractiveness of the righteousness of God are declared 
in Jesus Christ, the moral possibility is thereby opened 
either of their giving themselves to Him with all their 
hearts, or of hardening themselves against Him mth no 
prospect of any more attractive disclosure of God's 
goodness than is made in Christ, by which to break the 
evil will which may even now be growing hard against 
the supreme Christian motive to repentance and unself- 
ishness. 

Jesus realized that his presence upon earth brought to 
men the fearful possibility of sinning hopelessly against 
God's very grace, and puttiug themselves beyond the 
pale of his redemption ; and the knowledge of the fact 
that his coming was, and must prove to be, the crisis for 
human life, seems at times to have weighed upon his 



Last yudgment — Christian yudgment. 299 

spirit with a sadness beyond expression. Thus he said 
to the Pharisees, " I judge no man ; '^ — he would not 
judge, if he could help judging ; but he remembers that 
mercy is itself sin's last judgment, and he adds, " Yea, 
and if I judge, my judgment is true." " For I came 
not to judge the world ; " — not for that, not that he 
might cast a single soul into deeper condemnation, had 
he come from the Father ; — his whole sincerity of soul 
goes out in that protestation ; " For I came not to judge 
the world, but to save the world." But he knows that 
rejected salvation is final judgment — that redeeming 
love must prove that to be unworthy of eternal life 
which it cannot save; — and he adds, as the moral 
nature of things compels him to add, " He that rejecteth 
me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth 
him : the word that I spake, the same shall judge him 
in the last day." Jesus, then, would not judge — but, if 
rejected, how can he help judging? Rejection of the 
supreme good, when that good is fairly revealed, is the 
condemnation of the soul that can reject it. 

Yet Jesus will wait expecting until the last great day, 
before his enemies shall be made his footstool, and he 
shall sit upon the judgment-throne. Then, after the 
Christian era, shall be the end of the world. Then, not 
till then, shall the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord 
give up his mediatorial kingdom to the Father that God 
may be all and in all. Then our last judgment shall be 
the disclosure of what we have become in this Christian 
era of our opportunity, and under the dispensation of 
the Holy Ghost. There can be no judgment more final 
than this last Christian judgment of character. He 



300 The Reality of Faith, 

that hath the Son hath life ; he that hath not the Son 
hath not life. " I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the 
mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living 
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your rea- 
sonable service/* 



XX. 

LOOKING BACK UPON OUR EARTHLY LIFE. 

"^nl3 f)* saiir unto l^tm, 5 it\\tl'ii 5ata:Tt ks li^inin% fall from 
i)taim." — Luke X. i8. 

These words refer to a definite moment in Jesus' life. 
That same hour in which he sent forth the seventy, he 
beheld Satan fall from heaven. Yet that was a pro- 
phetic vision of the Lord. When he saw Satan falling, 
Jesus was in spirit above time, beholding as one finished 
whole, from the beginning to the end, the history of 
God's conquest of evil. AVhile the seventy were going 
forth to win their first unexpected success in his name, 
the Lord in prophetic anticipation was looking back 
upon his work, and theirs, as a work already accom- 
plished ; as even the devils, to their surprise, began to be 
subject unto them, his Spirit went forward to the final 
triumph of redemption, and as one looking back from 
its completion Jesus beheld Satan fallen. In the joy of 
that moment of prophetic faith Jesus had gone beyond 
his own life of sacrifice, beyond the conflicts of his 
Church, and he was as the Word with God looking upon 
the redemption of the world as one completed fact, and 
beholding sin as a power forever fallen. 

You will observe, particularly, this position as of one 
already beyond time in which at that moment our Lord 
was standing, and beholding the eternal consequences of 

301 



302 The Reality of Faith. 

his own life, when he saw the final fall of the Satanic 
power. For my sermon depends upon the possibility 
of our imitating in some human measure this example 
of our Lord, and for moments, at least, of faith taking 
like him positions above ourselves, as though we were 
already looking down upon our own earth-life. There 
is both an imitable and an inimitable element in every 
attitude of Jesus, and in the various incidents of his 
experience of our world. He is in all things our 
example; and we are, therefore, to approach him, 
throughout his conversation with men, expecting to find 
in his experience of our life even up to his cross some- 
thing in which he is as one of us, and in which we also 
may be as the Master was in the world. But the more 
we seek and find these imitable elements in Jesus, the 
stronger, also, will grow the impression that there was 
in him something beyond all human imitation — a 
diviner something in him pervading his life, and to be 
recognized even in its most human incidents. So in the 
spiritual exaltation, to which our text bears witness, 
there was manifestly a diviner consciousness and certainty 
of vision than we can attain in our best moments of 
faith ; — not as the Master can we, being in the spirit, 
put this world at once beneath our feet, and stand 
beyond history in God^s eternal triumph over sin. Not 
thus, as the Christ from God, can the spirit of man be 
transported wholly from the midst of the present into the 
eternal world, to lie at rest among the fulfilled decrees 
of perfect Love, looking back upon the future as though 
it were already past, and beholding the fallen Satan. 
We must recognize, then, the more than human con- 



Looking Back upon our Eaidhly Life. 303 

sciousness and diviner certainty indicated by this spirit- 
ual experience of Jesus ; nevertheless, we may find in 
it something, also, for our imitation. By availing our- 
selves of such powers of faith as we do have, we may 
seek to throw ourselves forward beyond our own lives 
in this world, and to look as from some higher position 
out among the eternal realities back upon these present 
scenes. We may gain thus truer views of what is the 
use and purport of this span of our life between the 
cradle and the grave. 

My sermon begins by asking two things of any who 
would profit by it. It asks you to take for this hour 
at least your own faiths for granted. The interro- 
gation-point has, indeed, its rights in the pulpit ; and 
seme of us are born with a disposition to punctuate 
ever}i;hing experienced in this world with an interroga- 
tion-point. But I do not raise just now any of those 
questions which life is so often asking of our hearts. I 
do not seek now to look searchingly through those shad- 
ows of doubt which, although they sometimes fall thick 
and dark across our thoughts, are only the shadows of 
earthly things, and which show, as the shadow proves 
the existence of a sun, that there must be beyond them, 
and above, the true Light in which we shall see light. 
I ask you, rather, for this hour at least, to believe your 
own souls, and to take your own spiritual faiths for 
granted. Give yourselves up to them, and let them lead 
you w^hither they will. Then my sermon makes this 
second requirement of any who would profit by it. It 
asks them to use freely and boldly the Christian imagina- 
tion in aid of faith. 



304 The Reality of Faith. 

Throwing ourselves forward in the pure imaginations 
of faith into the world to come, let us seek to look back 
and down upon this world as though we already were 
beyond it. Surrendering ourselves to our faith, and 
with our powers of spiritual imagination lent to the aid 
of our faith, let us seek humbly to imitate our Master, 
and look upon our world as he looked upon this earth, 
when, as from a position in eternity, he saw Satan fall 
from heaven. 

In the first place, if we look upon our own lives as 
one looks back upon a way already trodden, and a work 
already accomplished, we shall gain a truer sense of the 
proportions of things. If we can succeed in transporting 
ourselves beyond the present, and regarding its occupa- 
tions as already past ; if we can draw back, as it were, in 
our own souls from the events of now and here, and 
regard our whole life, past, present, and future, as one 
undivided and completed whole ; then we cannot fail to 
gain a more just estimate of the real proportions of events 
in our lives, and to correct, as in a large view from 
beyond, our present sense of the relative importance of 
things. And just this true sense of proportion in life is 
hard for us to keep in the nearness of present things ; 
yet it is essential to large, happy living that we should 
gain and keep it. In order that we may do this let us 
take moments even in the midst of duties or of cares when 
deliberately and thoughtfully we strive, as we are doing 
now, to throw ourselves forward through the years, and 
beyond our own death, and, as from above, survey the 
event, the trouble, the desire which now may seem to us 
so imperious, so strange, or so important. "What as we 



Looking Back upon our Earthly Life. 305 

look back from beyond the day of our own death is our 
life ? What the relative heights and depths, the com- 
parative lights and shadows, of the things among which 
we are now in our lives ? 

Some of you here present may have sailed some summer 
afternoon from Mt. Desert towards the open sea. You 
noticed, as you floated out of the harbor, and looked back 
from the sea, that the mountains did not stand in the 
same groupings quite, and no longer showed towards one 
another the same magnitudes, as they seemed to do when 
you were among them, and looked up to them from the 
foot of some near height which rose just before you. 
That which then seemed the highest becomes a lesser hill 
as you measure it from your boat at a little distance oif ; 
and when you are far enough out at sea to take the 
whole island in your eye, then the mountains stand before 
you as God made them, each in its own place and pro- 
portion, and you know which is the lesser cliff, and which 
is the greatest of all. And in the retrospect, also, rough 
places grow smooth, the fissures in the cliffs, across which 
you could hardly find your way, are seen to be but reliefs 
of shadow upon the sunny face of the rock ; the thought 
of their brokenness and hardness vanishes, as your eye 
follows mth delight the lines of the great picture which 
you look at under the sail from out at sea ; while over 
all the storm-beaten crags and heights there falls a mellow 
and purpling light. Oh, my friends, be sure whenever 
we shall be far enough out in eternity to look back and 
see our lives as one whole, we shall understand better 
God's grouping of events in them ; we shall know then 
how all the while He who sees the end from the begin- 



3o6 The Reality of Faith. 

ning, and beholds all earthly things framed in the quiet 
charity of heaven, has looked in the good pleasure of his 
love upon the history of this world, which to us in the 
midst of it seems often so broken, overshadowed, and 
wild ! And certainly the more freedom of faith we can 
exercise in letting our hearts sail away from the present 
and the near, taking in as one view our own past, pres- 
ent, and future, and contemplating our life as one divinely 
ordered whole of existence ; the happier will our thought 
of life be, and the more just our estimate of what things 
are small or great in our lives. 

In the second place, in so far as we can put ourselves 
in the exercise of our own faiths beyond this life, we shall 
gain in many respects a different, and in all a more just 
estimate of our own real attainments. We shall see more 
clearly what we may expect to win for ourselves from 
life. Look down now upon what you have made, or are 
making, for yourselves in this world from this higher 
position after your own death. Measure what you are 
seeking to attain by its worth as judged by that estimate 
from beyond. From this point of view let us seek to 
determine what are the real attainments which a human 
being may reach in this world. The difference between 
a man's fictitious and a man's real attainments may be 
measured by conceiving that man to have come through 
death to his immortality, and then by asking what can 
we imagine him to have in himself which he may keep 
there, as the result of all his toil here. That artisan, for 
example, has stood up faithfully for years to his work. 
He dies. The arm loses its strength, and the hand its 
cunning. What can he have gained by years of faithful 



Looking Back upon our Earthly Life. 307 

work in making square-joints, honest insides, or lines true 
to an infinitesimal ? What can the workman be con- 
ceived as keeping hereafter as the reward of all his labor 
under the sun ? Not the eye, not the arm of flesh ; yet 
the doctrine of the resurrection stands in the Scrip- 
tures as the pledge that our life here and hereafter is to 
be in all its powers one continuous life ; and though this 
body shall return to dust, the discipline and capacity of 
the man, which is to be gained through the right exercise 
even of these bodily powers, is something which may count 
in the life of man forever. Even in the honest and best 
exercise of his bodily senses a man may be training him- 
self for the quick and skilled use of those powers of 
spiritual embodiment which shall succeed these mortal 
powers. That artist, for instance, who one evening as 
we gained the crest of a hill, with an exclamation of 
delight, counted instantly five different hues upon the 
horizon where my duller eye had only seen at first glance 
one resplendence of the setting sun, may have gained in 
that quick sense of color a power which shall be carried 
on as a possession of the soul into the spiritual body, 
enabling that trained artist's spirit hereafter to see with 
instantaneous and enhanced delight the hues and harmo- 
nies of color of the new heavens and the new earth. 

Hence I venture to say that the training and discipline 
of any power in the honest work of a lifetime may be so 
much real attainment for immortality — so much gain 
carried in the man himself through death into the world 
of larger opportunity. A man therefore should perform 
all his labor on this earth not as though what he does 
now is all of it, but as an heir of immortality. 



3o8 The Reality of Faith. 

Take another example from the business of men. A 
merchant spends his powers in amassing a fortune. Put 
that merchant forward in your spiritual imagination of 
him beyond the years. Look back upon his whole life 
from some point after death. He lives on. What is his 
gain from the world ? His property has been divided. 
Another name is upon the sign over his store. Other 
customers than he once recognized buy at the counter where 
he has been long forgotten. What has his life profited him 
under the sun ? I am not asking just now of his personal 
character and final judgment before God. I am asking 
of his possible attainments ; — what has that man by any 
possibility carried from the work of his life beyond the 
years ? what lasting attainments has he made in that store 
from which one day he went home to die ? It is certain 
that he brought nothing into this world, and that he 
could have carried nothing out. No thing; — not a 
creditor's promise to pay; not a mortgage upon any 
earthly thing ; not a single thing from all his merchan- 
dise and all his gains ! But shall an honest, able 
life of business count then for nothing among the 
real attainments of immortality ? Nay ; that man has 
carried something in himself beyond the grave. That 
faculty of quick judgment ; that power of broad, clear 
comprehension of a situation; that strength of pur- 
pose, that firmness of will, that promptness of decision, 
that capacity for self-denial and self-restraint ; that habit 
of moderation in the midst of abundance ; that human 
kindliness, helpfulness, and charity, also, — these quali- 
ties which have been both the means and the results of his 
success ou earth, these attainments of the man, are not 



Looking Back icpon our Earthly Life. 309 

for nothing in the judgments of eternity. Death shall 
not rob the man of these ; they are in him, and of him — 
his personal worth — and they do not belong to the mor- 
tality which returns to the dust. They are powers, also, 
for other worlds, and capacities formed here for life in 
other spheres. 

Or that scholar who has followed truth, though at 
times he knew not whether truth were a phantom 
mocking him from out the universal night, or whether 
the truth he thought he saw was a glimmering through 
this twilight-world of the glory of the face of God ; — 
that scholar shall leave his books of science behind him, 
and as he looks back from beyond the gropings of his 
life-long studies he may laugh at the folly of all his 
wisdom among the children of this world ; but not for 
nought has been the devotion of a soul to the truth. 
That longing love of truth, that joy of his soul in truth 
believed, and mllingness to suffer for truth found, shall 
prove his enlargement of mind for the knowledge of 
eternity. If in aught he was tempted by fear of con- 
sequence, or by love of applause, or by pride of in- 
tellect, or by clamor of the people, from the love of 
truth and of God, that shall prove indeed his loss and 
failure of mind for the revelations of the other world ; 
but his love of truth, and his inner faith in it kept ever 
sacred, his life-long willingness to be taught of God, and 
openness of mind to all messengers of the eternal Truth, 
come they from eai-th, or sky, or the hearts of his fellow- 
men, — this shall be the scholar^s reward — his disciplined 
and exultant power of mind to comprehend all mys- 
teries, and to sound the depths, and to sing praises from 



3IO The Reality of Faith. 

the heights, after he shall have gone hence to be taught 
by the Lord's angels who excel in strength to behold all 
things in the one true light. 

Whatever may be your personal circles of concern in 
life, whatever the occupations in which providence may 
circumscribe your present, if you would understand what 
may be your permanent gain from life, and what are the 
personal attainments which you are really, that is, eter- 
nally, making now, let me invite you, in the exercise of 
your Christian faith, boldly at times to run forward before 
your years, to seek, if only in spiritual imagination, some 
point of view out in eternity from which to judge what 
you are doing and gaining now. For our belief in our 
immortality, when we make earnest with it, and really 
accept it, is not a mere dream of shadowy existence after 
death ; nor is it a general and vague expectation of a life 
so utterly unlike and broken off from the life we are now 
living that what we are doing and gaining here and 
now counts for nothing hereafter. Not that is Christ's 
revelation of the world to come ! Not such is the full 
Christian expectation of life beyond death ! The con- 
nection between the hereafter and the here, between the 
now and then, is organic, vital, inevitable. It is close as 
the connection between school-time and manhood. It is 
a continuity of existence woven of the tissues of the soul, 
and strong as the loves of human hearts. Jesus, in all 
the essential elements, powers, and characteristics of his 
humanity, is the same man Jesus the day after as the 
day before the resurrection. Turn utter sceptic if you 
can and must, and say, I die; but when we take our 
natural faith in our own spiritual birthright for granted, 



Looking Back tcpon our Earthly Life. 3 1 1 

and Avheu we say we believe the Gospel of the resurrec- 
tion, let us not then make a half-truth of it, and live as 
though our immortality were only some vague, vast, 
formless future hope, and not a present, practical fact. 

Jesus lived for two worlds at one and the same time. 
He was the son of man who was in heaven, as the 
Scripture says. All true, deep life must have something 
of the sense of heaven in it as a present fact. Certainly 
the power of sustained enthusiasm for all work, the 
capacity of growing hopefulness, and the charm of per- 
petual youthfulness through life, must be the present 
power of our immortality in us and over us. And no 
man can rightly estimate his own striving in this world, 
or measure, as he should, his own attainments, unless 
he takes also this larger view, and will look honestly 
down upon himself, as one might look back from beyond 
his own grave. 

We are led, thus, to the third remark that only as we 
strive to throw ourselvas forward into the life beyond, 
and to consider our whole existence here as it is in its 
relation to the man and his life then and there, can we 
form a safe estimate of the worths of things. Such and 
such opportunities are brought now within reach of a 
young man or woman. What are they worth? So 
many weeks or months of study, of training, of perse- 
verance in some choice, will bring such and such good — 
professional success, social success, pleasant days, agreea- 
ble friends, so much prospect and joy of home, and 
healthful, quiet age. I am not questioning the wisdom 
or the need of these common estimates of the worth of 
life. It is good for us, at times, to make them. There 



312 The Reality of Faith. 

are crises when we must put our lives into honest earthly- 
balances, and weigh them. But we are capable of meas- 
uring things by a truer standard, and of weighing life — 
the whole of it, and all things v/hich it contains — in a 
larger scale. Run merrily in imagination on through 
your years. And, following Christ, and so with untrou- 
bled heart, go happily also down through the valley at 
the close, and venture in the thoughts of your hearts out 
into the unobstructed breadth and distances of the life 
beyond. Then turn and look back, and consider again 
your estimates of things. What as you look back, as 
one already beyond this little life, are the real worths of 
things ? their final and unalterable worths ? If our own 
deeper, truer instincts should fail us here, we have the 
sure word of God. Jesus Christ who could easily put 
himself in the spirit beyond this world and its history 
— who already when among men began to judge this 
world as though the last day were present and the Son 
of man upon the throne — Jesus Christ left no doubt as 
to what in the retrospect of eternity is of worth before 
God. It is the new heart. It is the soul born of the 
Spirit of God. It is the regenerated man. The image 
of Christ in a human heart is the gain of eternal worth. 
The Gospel-measure of worths is Christ-likeness. And 
all other attainments shall fall short, if they are not 
made rich unto God through the grace of Christ. 
Given the new, right heart, and even now, as one looks 
forward to his own death, he may think. That, also, some 
day it will be pleasant for me to remember ! 

Suffer me once more, before I close, to commend to 
you this Christlike habit, so far as by faith we may 



Looking Back upon our Earthly Life. 313 

imitate it, of putting ourselves for moments at least far 
away from our own present, and looking down upon our- 
selves, as it were, from some higher sphere. For there are 
some special times and seasons when a moment of down- 
looking, as from above, upon ourselves, may be of the 
greatest benefit or comfort. In the midst of the vexa- 
tions and petty annoyances of things, it is good, like 
Jesus, to go off for a moment, and to be among the stars. 
\Yith the angry word rising to the lips, it is good for 
us if, for an instant, we can succeed in being in the spirit 
as on the Lord's day. The mere effort to rise out of the 
present, and to take the large, far look, gives an inward 
command of soul over things before us, a calmness for 
trial, a strength for emergency, a courage for danger, a 
heart even for death, such as can be won in no other way. 
And not only in times of temptation, of stirring passion, 
or of difficult duty, do we need this spiritual disenthral- 
ment from the present, if only for moments of prayer, 
in order that as sons of God we may quit ourselves like 
men. There are also common human states and con- 
ditions which are neither altogether happy nor safe for 
those who are never able nor willing to judge themselves 
and others as though life were past, and the hour for the 
final thought had come. Thus, equally in success or in 
adversity, do we need to rise above ourselves in this larger 
judgment of our present. Certainly in adversity, if a 
man is not merely to set his teeth, and harden his heart 
against fate ! And equally in prosperity is this larger 
estimate of our life, as from another world, needed. 
Success is a safe happiness to the Christian man who can 
look down upon it as from out the kingdom of heaven. 



314 The Reality of Faith. 

Success is a danger and snare of soul to that man who is 
not himself already in his heart above it. There is a 
Christian view of success which may render it both safe 
and pleasant for any one who has done any good deed 
to rejoice heartily as unto the Lord in his own work. 
It is the view in which one stands not alone, rejoicing in 
himself, but in which he sees himself to be but one of a 
large and blessed company of God's servants, by whom 
God's will is to be done on earth and in heaven. There 
is possible a broad and generous joy in one's own work 
and life, in which we go out of ourselves, blending our 
thanksgivings with the triumphs of all good men, and 
finding our lives to be part and portion of the universal 
gladness of God's saints. It is always safe for us to 
think of ourselves and our work, and our own position 
in the world, if we are careful not to look down and to 
measure ourselves merely by our shadows on things close 
at hand — our enlarged and unreal selves, — if we think 
rather of ourselves as we may hope some day to look back 
over our lives, when from beyond death we shall see how 
all along God's strong purpose ran before us, and his 
angels had charge over us, and the good which we may 
have done, or the success in which we may have rejoiced, 
was but our part in the good gift and the perfect boon 
which come from above. 

This position, finally, as of one looking back upon 
this world, which we all need sometimes to take in the 
Christian imaginations of faith, is the position from 
which in a little while we must be judging all things 
both in life and death. Our whole life erelong shall be 
one finished picture in the retrospect. And may it lie 



Looking Back upon our Earthly Life. 315 

then behind us in the softening, hallowing light of 
God's grace ! By the grace of God, the penitent, con- 
verted man, even now judging himself as from out the 
hereafter, as Christ did the world, may say : — From my 
life I saw sin falling ; from the heaven of my desires I 
beheld Satan fallen ; — Behold God alone is reigning. 



THE END. 



Old Faiths in New Light 

BY 

NEWMAN SMYTH, 

Author of *' The Religious Feeling.'*^ 



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This work aims to meet a growing need by gathering materials of 
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put these results of recent scholarship together according to one leading 
idea in a modern construction of old faith. Mr. Smyth's book is remark- 
able no less for its learning and wide acquaintance with prevailing modes 
of thought, than for its fairness and judicial spirit. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 



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*' It is a long time since we have met with an abler or fresher theological treatise 
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OUTLINES OF PRIMITIVE BELIEF 

among the Indo-European Eaces. 

By CHARLES FRANCIS KEARY, M.A., 

of the British Museum. 



One vol, crown 8vo,, - - - « $2^0, 

Mr. Keary's Book is not simply a series of essays in comparative myth- 
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fascinating field of exploration. 

" We have an important and singularly interesting contribution to our knowledge 
of pre-his'tbric creeds in the Outlines of prt-historic Belie/ among the I tido- European 
Races^ by Mr. C. F. Keary, of the British Museum. No contemporary essayist in 
the field of comparative mythology — and we do not except Max Miiller — has known 
how to embellish and illumine a work of scientific aims and solid worth with so much 
imaginative power and literary charm. There are chapters in this volume that are as 
persuasive as a paper of Matthew Arnold's, as delightful as a poem. The author is 
not only a trained inquirer but he presents the fruits of his research with the skill and 
felicity of an artist." — New York ^un. 

"Mr. Keary, having unusual advantages in the British Museum for studying 
comparative philology, has gone through all the authorities concerning Hindoo, 
Greek, early Norse, modern European, and other forms of faith in their early stages, 
and there has never before been so thorough and so captivating an exposition of them 
as that given in this book." — Philadelphia Bulletin. 

THE DAWN OF HISTORY" 

AN INTRODUCTION TO PRE-HISTORIC STUDY. 
Edited by C, F. KEARY, M.A., 

OF THE BKITISH MUSKUM. 



One Volume, 12mo., - - - $1.25. 

This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man in the re- 
mains discovered in caves or Jsewhere in different parts of Europe ; of 
language, its growth, and the story it tells of the prehistoric users of it ; of 
the I aces of mankind, early social life, the religions, mythologies, and folk- 
tales of mankind, and of the history of writmg. A list of authorities is 
appended, and an index has been prepared specially for this edition. 



"The book may be heartily rc-ommended as probably the most satisfactory 
summary of the subject that there is." — Nation. 

" A fascinating manual, without a vestige of the dullness usually charged against 
scientific works. . . „ In its way, the work is a model of what a popular scientific 
work should be; it is readable, it is easily understood, and its style is simple, yet dig- 
nified, avoiding equally the affection of the nursery and of the laboratory." — 

Boston Sat. Eve. Gazette. 

*^* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, vpon receipt of 
price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Bro.\dway, New York. 



THEBEGINNINGSOFHISTORY 

According to the Bible and the Traditions of the Oriental Peoples. From 
the Creation of Man to the Deluge By Francois Lenormant, 
Professor of Archaeology at the Mational Library of France, etc. 
(Translated from the Second French Edition). "With an introduction 
by Francis Brown, Associate Professor in Biblical Philology, 
Union Theological Seminary. 



1 Vol., 12mo, 600 2^ag€s, - - - $2,50, 



" What should we see in the first chapters of Genesis ? " writes M. Lenor- 
mant in his preface — "'A revealed narrative, or a human tradition, gathered 
up for preservation by inspired w^riters as the oldest memory of their race 7 
This is the problem which I have been led to examine by comparing the nar- 
rative of the Bible with those which were current among the civilized peo- 
ples of most ancient origin by which Israel was surrounded, and from the 
midst of which it came." 

The book is not more erudite than it is absorbing in its interest. It has 
had an immense influence upon contemporary thought ; and has approached 
its task with an unusual mingling of the reverent and the scientific spirit. 



" That the ' Oriental Peoples ' had legends on the Creation, the Fall of Man, the 
Deluge, and other primitive events, there is no denying. Nor is there any need of 
denying it, as this admirable volume shows. Mr. Lenormant is not only a believer 
in revelation, but a devout confessor of what came by Moses ; as well as of what came 
*-v Christ. In this explanation of Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian and Phenician 
tradition, he discloses a prodigality of thought and skill allied to great variety of pur- 
suit, and diligent manipulation of what he has secured. He ' spoils the Egyptians ' 
by boldly using for Christian purposes materials, which, if left unused, might be 
turned against the credibility of the Mosaic records. 

" From the mass of tradition here examined it would seem that if these ancient 
legends have a common basis of truth, the first part of Genesis stands more generally 
related to the religious history of mankind, than if it is taken primarily as one account, 
by one man, to one people. . . . While not claiming for the author the 
setting forth of the absolute truth, nor the drawing from what he has set forth the 
soundest conclusions, we can assure our readers of a diminishing fear of learned un- 
belief after the perusal of this work." — The Neiu jEnglander. 

" With reference to the book as a whole it may be said : (i). That nowhere else can 
one obtain the mass of information upon this subject in so convenient a form; (2). That 
the investigation is conducted in a truly scientific manner, and with an eminently 
Christian spirit ; (3). That the results, though very different from those in common 
acceptance, contain much that is interesting and to say the least, plausible ; (4). That 
the author while he seems in a number of cases to be injudicious in his state- 
ments and conclusions, has done work in investigation and in working out details that 
will be of service to all, whether general readers or specialists."— 7".^^ Hebrew 
Student. 

" The work is one that deserves to be studied by all students of ancient history, and 
in particular by ministers of the Gospel, whose office requires them to interpret the 
Scriptures, and who ought not to be ignorant of the latest and most interesting con- 
tribution of science to the elucidation to the sacred volume."— iV<f7w York Tribune. 



*^ For Sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price, 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



THE WRITINGS OF GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D. 

Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale College. 

ESSAYS ON THE SUPERNATDML ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY, 

■With special references to the theories of Renan, Strauss, and the 
Tubingen School. 

New and enlarged edition. One Vol, Svo, $3:C0. 

" Able and scholarly essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, in which 
Prof. Fisher discusses such subjects as the genuineness of the Gospel of John, 
Baur's view of early Christian History and Literature, and the mythical theory of 
Strauss." — North America7i. Revie^o. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

With a view of the state of the Roman "World at the Birth of Christ. 

One Vol. Svo, . , $3.00. 

" Prof. Fisher has displayed in this, as in his previous published writings, that 
catholicity and that calm judicial quality of mind which are so indispensable to a 
true historical critic, and so natural in one, who, like the author, is a loving disciple 
of the revered Neander." — Boston Advertiser. 

HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION. 

One Vol. Svo, . . $2.00. 

From Prof . Charles A. Aihen, D.D., Princeton Theological Seminary. 
Prof. Fisher's History of the Pefor/uation presents the results of prolonged, 
extended, and exact study with those excellent qualities of style, which are so char- 
acteristic of him — clearness, smoothness, judicial fairness, vividness, felicity in ar- 
ranging material, as well as in grouping and delineating characters. It must become 
not only a library favorite, but a popular manual where such a work is required for 
instruction and study. For such uses it seems to me admirably adapted. 

DISCUSSIONS IN HISTORY AND THEOLOGY. 

One Vol. Svo, , . $3.00. 

" Prof. Fisher has gathered here a number of essays on subjects connected with 
those departments of study and research which have engaged his special attention, 
and in which he has made himself an authority." 

FAITH AND RATIONALISM. 

One Vol. 12mo, . $1.25. 

" This little volume may be regarded as virtually a primer of modern religious 
thought, which contains within its condensed pages rich materials that are not easily 
gathered from the great volumes of our theological authors. Alike in learning, style 
and power of discrimination, it is honorable to the author and to his university, 
which does not urge the claims of science by slighting the worth of faith or 
philosophy." — N. V. Times. 

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 

One Vol. 12 mo. raper, 30 cts, ClotJi^ 40 cfs. 

" This masterly essay of Professor Fisher is one of the best arguments for 
Christianity that could be placed in the hands of those who have come under 
influence of sceptical writers. 

*^* For Sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price .^ by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



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